Interesting first item in Today's You and Yours about the difficulty of delivering Section 106 Housing potentially holding up the remainder of a development because it has to be done first* .
*This is I think is because in the past developers did not do it until the end and then could avoid eg by simply not finishing, or making the company for the particular development bust. So partly self-inflicted, though it's more complex than that with other causes such as Housing Association funding, building regs becoming more demanding next year so these this year's houses will need retrofit etc.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
Yeah, it's really odd. It's like they've deliberately gone out of their way to build up this budget with the the absolute worst messaging they possibly could.
All they've achieved for weeks now is to make people increasingly worried and anxious. 🙄
The politics behind all this is mad. Sir Keir has let the notion that the government lives or dies on this budget spread like wildfire, but we all know - unless Rachel suddenly turns into some sort of political superwoman - that's it's going to be crap. Sir Keir has killed his own government before it's even started. He's essentially engineered his own Black Wednesday? Why?
Interesting first item in Today's You and Yours about the difficulty of delivering Section 106 Housing potentially holding up the remainder of a development because it has to be done first* .
*This is I think is because in the past developers did not do it until the end and then could avoid eg by simply not finishing, or making the company for the particular development bust. So partly self-inflicted, though it's more complex than that with other causes such as Housing Association funding, building regs becoming more demanding next year so these this year's houses will need retrofit etc.
On R2 asked to choose between Harris and Trump Kemi said 'I like them both equally.'
Jenrick had previously said he preferred Trump
So, out of step with British public opinion according to IPSOS "Overall, 14% are favourable towards Donald Trump and 71% are unfavourable, including 83% of 2019 Labour voters, 83% of Remain voters, two-thirds of 2019 Conservative voters (67%) and 65% of Leave voters."
54% of Reform voters want Trump to win however and 43% of 2024 Tories want either Trump to win or are undecided between him and Harris
On R2 asked to choose between Harris and Trump Kemi said 'I like them both equally.'
Jenrick had previously said he preferred Trump
So, out of step with British public opinion according to IPSOS "Overall, 14% are favourable towards Donald Trump and 71% are unfavourable, including 83% of 2019 Labour voters, 83% of Remain voters, two-thirds of 2019 Conservative voters (67%) and 65% of Leave voters."
54% of Reform voters want Trump to win however and 43% of 2024 Tories want either Trump to win or are undecided between him and Harris
On R2 asked to choose between Harris and Trump Kemi said 'I like them both equally.'
Jenrick had previously said he preferred Trump
So, out of step with British public opinion according to IPSOS "Overall, 14% are favourable towards Donald Trump and 71% are unfavourable, including 83% of 2019 Labour voters, 83% of Remain voters, two-thirds of 2019 Conservative voters (67%) and 65% of Leave voters."
54% of Reform voters want Trump to win however and 43% of 2024 Tories want either Trump to win or are undecided between him and Harris
Which just shows how bonkers Reform supporters are and why the new Tory leader should be seeking to attract the votes of those who abandoned the Tories for the Lib Dems/Labour and not those who did so to Reform.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1850707911569277368 .. among GOP operatives and staffers under 30 or so the majority, maybe the great majority had their political awakenings on sites like 4chan, 8chan, various far-right, incel and incel adjacent online communities. It crops up in various ways if you know where to look. It's why DeSantis had those weird frankly homoerotic campaign vids during the primaries...
...If you followed D politics in the 80s, 90s, aughts, you knew that pretty much all the big people, the candidates, the powerful operatives had all first met on the McGovern campaign. Almost didn't matter whether they were on the right or left of the party. That was the formative experience for all of them. In 2036 in the GOP it's going to be 4chan...
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
"@PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Clive Lewis and Bell Ribeiro-Addy have accused Keir Starmer of having a 'colonial mindset' over his relutance to discuss reparations for slave trade"
"@PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Clive Lewis and Bell Ribeiro-Addy have accused Keir Starmer of having a 'colonial mindset' over his relutance to discuss reparations for slave trade"
"I tolerate Clive Lewis as an MP under protest and in the hope that one day my fellow citizens will democratically decide to remove him from office. Until that time, I accept he's a Member of Parliament and shall confine myself to calling him a prat."
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
Yeah, it's really odd. It's like they've deliberately gone out of their way to build up this budget with the the absolute worst messaging they possibly could.
All they've achieved for weeks now is to make people increasingly worried and anxious. 🙄
The politics behind all this is mad. Sir Keir has let the notion that the government lives or dies on this budget spread like wildfire, but we all know - unless Rachel suddenly turns into some sort of political superwoman - that's it's going to be crap. Sir Keir has killed his own government before it's even started. He's essentially engineered his own Black Wednesday? Why?
It feels like, after 8 years delayed, George Osborne's "punishment" budget is upon us...
"@PolitlcsUK 🚨 NEW: Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Clive Lewis and Bell Ribeiro-Addy have accused Keir Starmer of having a 'colonial mindset' over his relutance to discuss reparations for slave trade"
"I tolerate Clive Lewis as an MP under protest and in the hope that one day my fellow citizens will democratically decide to remove him from office. Until that time, I accept he's a Member of Parliament and shall confine myself to calling him a prat."
Clive Lewis is your MP, CR? You have my sympathies, lol!
Re the budget. Worth checking what the tax on the amount employers pay their workers is in different countries. For example in Spain it is 29.8% which compares to the current 16.8% in the UK -13.8% NI plus 3% pension contribution under auto enrolment (assuming everyone stays enrolled and has income over the minimum). The high Spanish figure pays their much much better pensions than in the UK.
It was a pretty poor effort. Where were the attempts to take control of the army, navy, air force, police, national guard? What was the plan? Hitlers attempt in 1923 was better organised (and still shit).
Does a plan have to be viable to be real? If someone attempts murder but fails due to incompetence is that still not attempted murder?
As to the plan, the thinking seems to be that preventing the certification of the election would have resulted in Trump claiming emergency powers and making spurious claims of election interference, to kick the decision up to the courts. Would it have worked? Probably not. That wouldn't have made it any less real.
Surely there would have been some kind of trail of this. Utter fantasist nonsense, just as it was to describe what happened then as an insurrection. It was a crowd that got out of control without any real aim to achieve anything, it is clear there was no organisation or premeditation. Absolutely zero anticipation of being able to get into the building.
Trump's biggest crime was been a sore loser.
They did get into the building.
And the videos that were eventually released of them being escorted through looked about as disorderly as year 11 school trip.
Some wandered around uncertain what to do. Others stole items, vandalised the building, tried to break into where the politicians were hiding, and had stated their intention was to find and hang individuals. It is denying reality and pandering to fascism to swallow the nonsense that they did nothing of note.
Oh, but it’s WildernessPt2. Denying reality and pandering to fascism is to be expected.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employer's NI is actually NOT a direct tax. It is an indirect tax. The distinction is that direct taxes are directly paid for by the person who suffers the hit, while indirect taxes are directly paid for by someone else.
VAT is the most obvious example of an indirect tax - it's paid by the shop, who is liable for it, but added to the customer's bill.
Employer's NI is like that. In practice, the employer is liable for it, though the hit is on the employee. So it's indirect. Employee NI, OTOH, is a direct tax, as is income tax.
Of course governments love indirect taxes, as they are much easier to hide, though direct taxes can be hidden too, so that people don't think about them that much, e.g. by PAYE.
Wow, that last one has been going on longer than the budget.
I believe the Branchform is the internationally recognised unit of interminableness, and it’s got Ten Hag well beaten (like most teams in the premiership).
Not a fascist. Well the behaviours on show can be directly mapped to fascist behaviours by people who know about them from working directly for the man for 2 years.
Not a coup. Well it was according to testimony from the people on the inside who were planning it. And they detail with evidence that Trump was at the heart of it.
But hey, we can discount facts and logic and reason because they are all politically biased or something. These witnesses can all be discounted as untrustworthy. Except that they were appointed by Trump and served him for extended periods. But you can trust Trump because he always appoints great people...
"planning it" You are living in a parallel world. A nation that has military grade arms widely in the hands of the population, but didnt seem to figure in the actual event.
Absurd nonsense. It got out of hand, in the same was as the marches that ended up with the hostels set alight here. It was not some make or break attempt to bring down the system, a crowd cajoled along at the hands of some hot heads.
There was no strategic planning of the event.
There was planning behind Jan 6, as there was also planning behind the rioting in the UK earlier this year. More significantly, Trump had a wider plan to enter false slates of electors. He wanted the certification of states’ electors to be delayed or for official slates to be rejected.
“Working people” means public sector workers, not those in the private sector, or self-employed.
To me a working person is anyone who derives some or all of their income from work. To Labour it seems to be — as I have been trying to keep track of Labour thinking in this area — people who work and who do not derive income from property and investments, or own a business, or have substantive savings.
I would guess that Labour's "working people" is somewhat less than half the amount of my definition.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
Wow, that last one has been going on longer than the budget.
I believe the Branchform is the internationally recognised unit of interminableness, and it’s got Ten Hag well beaten (like most teams in the premiership).
Surely the unsuitableness for Ten Hag has been going on as long as proposals to reform the House of Lords (against which even Branchform is a splash in a pan).
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
Yeah, it's really odd. It's like they've deliberately gone out of their way to build up this budget with the the absolute worst messaging they possibly could.
All they've achieved for weeks now is to make people increasingly worried and anxious. 🙄
The politics behind all this is mad. Sir Keir has let the notion that the government lives or dies on this budget spread like wildfire, but we all know - unless Rachel suddenly turns into some sort of political superwoman - that's it's going to be crap. Sir Keir has killed his own government before it's even started. He's essentially engineered his own Black Wednesday? Why?
It feels like, after 8 years delayed, George Osborne's "punishment" budget is upon us...
In many ways I sympathize with Rachel - she was given a poor hand. But in that situation don't make the budget the absolute centrepiece of your administration, the thing against which everything will be judged. Try and sneak it through beneath the radar.
On R2 asked to choose between Harris and Trump Kemi said 'I like them both equally.'
Jenrick had previously said he preferred Trump
So, out of step with British public opinion according to IPSOS "Overall, 14% are favourable towards Donald Trump and 71% are unfavourable, including 83% of 2019 Labour voters, 83% of Remain voters, two-thirds of 2019 Conservative voters (67%) and 65% of Leave voters."
54% of Reform voters want Trump to win however and 43% of 2024 Tories want either Trump to win or are undecided between him and Harris
Which just shows how bonkers Reform supporters are and why the new Tory leader should be seeking to attract the votes of those who abandoned the Tories for the Lib Dems/Labour and not those who did so to Reform.
Yet there are more of the former than the latter even though the Tories need both.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
On R2 asked to choose between Harris and Trump Kemi said 'I like them both equally.'
Jenrick had previously said he preferred Trump
So, out of step with British public opinion according to IPSOS "Overall, 14% are favourable towards Donald Trump and 71% are unfavourable, including 83% of 2019 Labour voters, 83% of Remain voters, two-thirds of 2019 Conservative voters (67%) and 65% of Leave voters."
54% of Reform voters want Trump to win however and 43% of 2024 Tories want either Trump to win or are undecided between him and Harris
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
Yeah, it's really odd. It's like they've deliberately gone out of their way to build up this budget with the the absolute worst messaging they possibly could.
All they've achieved for weeks now is to make people increasingly worried and anxious. 🙄
The politics behind all this is mad. Sir Keir has let the notion that the government lives or dies on this budget spread like wildfire, but we all know - unless Rachel suddenly turns into some sort of political superwoman - that's it's going to be crap. Sir Keir has killed his own government before it's even started. He's essentially engineered his own Black Wednesday? Why?
It feels like, after 8 years delayed, George Osborne's "punishment" budget is upon us...
In many ways I sympathize with Rachel - she was given a poor hand. But in that situation don't make the budget the absolute centrepiece of your administration, the thing against which everything will be judged. Try and sneak it through beneath the radar.
this budget sets the tone for the next 4 years of Government. Screw this up and the money isn't there to fix the issues that need to be resolved to win the next election..
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Amazing that people are unaware of the most basic definitions.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
That is a decent plan. Except that if Labour had entered the last GE with 1) in their manifesto, they wouldn't now be in power, regardless of 2). Meanwhile, I hope I'm not alone in finding it easy to know what is meant by 'working people'. It's people who work, and get paid, for a living. Employees, largely, but also many self-employed. And it doesn't matter if your wage is £10k or £100k - you're still a working person.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
The agency will become responsible for the employer ni not the employer.
So the Philadelphia Inquirer has not found that endorsement thing too tricky:
“Voters face an easy but tectonic choice in the race for the White House.
Will they choose the first woman or the oldest man to be the next president?
Will they choose the prosecutor or the convict?
Will they choose the candidate who supports restoring Roe v. Wade, or the man who bragged about overturning it?
Will they choose the candidate with a tax plan to help the middle class or the one who wants to help the superrich?
Will they choose the candidate who backs a tough bipartisan immigration law or the guy who killed the measure?
Will they choose the candidate who wants to combat climate change or the one who thinks it is a hoax?
Will they choose the candidate who upholds the peaceful transfer of power or the one who summoned a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol?
Will they choose the candidate who stands up to Vladimir Putin or the one who said Russia could do “whatever the hell they want”?
Will they choose the candidate who champions education, health care for all, and sensible gun safety laws, or the person who wants to close the U.S. Department of Education, repeal Obamacare, and told supporters after a school shooting to “get over it”?
Will they choose the candidate who supports the working class or the one who is anti-union and opposed raising the minimum wage?
Will they choose a woman of color who wants to unite the country, or a man with a history of misogynistic, racist, and divisive comments and actions?
Will they choose the candidate who supports LGBTQ rights or the one who wants to roll back protections for the gay community?
Will they choose the candidate who will uphold the presidential oath, or the one who was impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, profited from the White House, dangled pardons to cronies, and was indicted four times?
This baker’s dozen list could go on, but the choice is clear and obvious. Vice President Kamala Harris wants to help all Americans.
Donald Trump wants to help himself.
That is why The Inquirer endorses Kamala Devi Harris to be the 47th president of the United States.
If elected, Harris, 60, would be the first Black, South Asian woman to hold the nation’s highest office. She rarely references her historic candidacy, and instead is laser-focused on earning votes through the substance of her vision, ideas, and temperament.” — Inquirer Editorial Staff
“Working people” means public sector workers, not those in the private sector, or self-employed.
It's a silly phrase to use. I don't like a rise in Employer NI because I think it will lead to more self employment. However this is the position Labour have got themselves into.
Russian stocks appear to be tanking today almost back down to where they were at the end of the summer. Perhaps inevitable after the rise in base rate to 21% with perhaps more to come. Ukraine knocking out some of their oil refineries whilst the Saudis increase production to compensate would be the perfect double whammy.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employer's NI is actually NOT a direct tax. It is an indirect tax. The distinction is that direct taxes are directly paid for by the person who suffers the hit, while indirect taxes are directly paid for by someone else.
VAT is the most obvious example of an indirect tax - it's paid by the shop, who is liable for it, but added to the customer's bill.
Employer's NI is like that. In practice, the employer is liable for it, though the hit is on the employee. So it's indirect. Employee NI, OTOH, is a direct tax, as is income tax.
Of course governments love indirect taxes, as they are much easier to hide, though direct taxes can be hidden too, so that people don't think about them that much, e.g. by PAYE.
That is only true to the extent that employee wages can be effectively reduced to reflect the cost of employers NIC.
At the lower bound of the minimum wage that is not true. So employers NIC becomes a direct tax on employers employing.
This then economically could lead to fewer jobs and greater efficiencies and productivity.
Elsewhere it depends on the dynamics in the Labour market. For public sector jobs which are subject to salary review bodies this may also not be true if the treasury is making the department whole for increases in employers NIC. However the efficiency argument here only applies if the treasury does not keep the departments whole.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
That is a decent plan. Except that if Labour had entered the last GE with 1) in their manifesto, they wouldn't now be in power, regardless of 2). Meanwhile, I hope I'm not alone in finding it easy to know what is meant by 'working people'. It's people who work, and get paid, for a living. Employees, largely, but also many self-employed. And it doesn't matter if your wage is £10k or £100k - you're still a working person.
Yes, being honest about the public finances in an election campaign if your opponent isn't is very risky. You'll probably get rewarded for your virtue with defeat at the polls.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
The agency will become responsible for the employer ni not the employer.
Tell me you don't have a clue how the agency worker market works without saying as much.
Put it this way - I don't remember any agencies increasing rates when employer NI was increased, I do remember many trying to cut it when the employer NI was cut.
The people impact where always the workers at the very bottom of the chain..
@lxeagle17 One of the "funnier" signals we have of a Kamala Harris victory is that I have *never* seen DC and corporate conventional wisdom more convinced of Trump running away with it than they are now.
It's really an election with no clear leader, but the GOP confidence is *astounding*.
These people have the worst vibes on earth (me included) and if they "feel" something, be skeptical. Insider vibes are the worst way to guess how the average American voter is going to react to anything.
The Republicans are projecting an image of a landslide and are hyped on early voting numbers in a way I have never seen before.
You can credibly construct an argument for Trump as a favorite, but we can do that for Harris too. The way people are buying it is incredible.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
That is a decent plan. Except that if Labour had entered the last GE with 1) in their manifesto, they wouldn't now be in power, regardless of 2). Meanwhile, I hope I'm not alone in finding it easy to know what is meant by 'working people'. It's people who work, and get paid, for a living. Employees, largely, but also many self-employed. And it doesn't matter if your wage is £10k or £100k - you're still a working person.
Yes, being honest about the public finances in an election campaign if your opponent isn't is very risky. You'll probably get rewarded for your virtue with defeat at the polls.
I'm fairly ambivalent to all the furore about who is a "working person" and who isn't. I know I'm not any more but it's not the great political divide some of the more hysterical anti-Labour commentators would have us believe.
There's so much talk still about "class" and that's before where you were educated or where you live or how you voted in 2016. The compartmentalisation of society makes scapegoating easier - blame the pensioners, the young, those on welfare, the wealthy, the foreigners etc, etc. Populism thrives on that scapegoating, that demonising of whole groups because they are somehpw "different" or are "favoured" etc, etc.
As for the finances, the budget deficit numbers are bad but not as disastrous as some on here would lead me to believe. Hopefully we'll see a big tax payment in January to reduce the numbers overall - I'd rather we had no deficit at all but the journey to that nirvana remains just out of reach. We still borrow too much and the debt interest payments are an unfortunate removal of funds which could be used elsewhere.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
The agency will become responsible for the employer ni not the employer.
I think "agency worker" is redundant now as generally PAYE through the agent isn't offered. An inside IR35 worker has to agree to use an umbrella company, who take a further cut, and are responsible for deducting and paying employer's NI and employee's NI and income tax (though not legally responsible, if they fail to send it to HMRC that's the worker's problem). Any increase in employer NI will reduce the inside IR35 worker's net pay. The inside IR35 but not an employee status should be dispensed with, it should be employed with full employee rights or contractor with the associated independence Inc tax status. Employers are being allowed to take the piss.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
The agency will become responsible for the employer ni not the employer.
I think "agency worker" is redundant now as generally PAYE through the agent isn't offered. An inside IR35 worker has to agree to use an umbrella company, who take a further cut, and are responsible for deducting and paying employer's NI and employee's NI and income tax (though not legally responsible, if they fail to send it to HMRC that's the worker's problem). Any increase in employer NI will reduce the inside IR35 worker's net pay. The inside IR35 but not an employee status should be dispensed with, it should be employed with full employee rights or contractor with the associated independence Inc tax status. Employers are being allowed to take the piss.
Care to guess the one area of employment that is completely ignored within the 2024 Employment Rights Bill
If you guessed agency / umbrella workers you are 100% correct...
Even the umbrella industry wants regulation because of the number of tax avoidance schemes or other issues yet it quickly goes into the too difficult category when the Government looks at it..
So the Philadelphia Inquirer has not found that endorsement thing too tricky:
“Voters face an easy but tectonic choice in the race for the White House.
Will they choose the first woman or the oldest man to be the next president?
Will they choose the prosecutor or the convict?
Will they choose the candidate who supports restoring Roe v. Wade, or the man who bragged about overturning it?
Will they choose the candidate with a tax plan to help the middle class or the one who wants to help the superrich?
Will they choose the candidate who backs a tough bipartisan immigration law or the guy who killed the measure?
Will they choose the candidate who wants to combat climate change or the one who thinks it is a hoax?
Will they choose the candidate who upholds the peaceful transfer of power or the one who summoned a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol?
Will they choose the candidate who stands up to Vladimir Putin or the one who said Russia could do “whatever the hell they want”?
Will they choose the candidate who champions education, health care for all, and sensible gun safety laws, or the person who wants to close the U.S. Department of Education, repeal Obamacare, and told supporters after a school shooting to “get over it”?
Will they choose the candidate who supports the working class or the one who is anti-union and opposed raising the minimum wage?
Will they choose a woman of color who wants to unite the country, or a man with a history of misogynistic, racist, and divisive comments and actions?
Will they choose the candidate who supports LGBTQ rights or the one who wants to roll back protections for the gay community?
Will they choose the candidate who will uphold the presidential oath, or the one who was impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, profited from the White House, dangled pardons to cronies, and was indicted four times?
This baker’s dozen list could go on, but the choice is clear and obvious. Vice President Kamala Harris wants to help all Americans.
Donald Trump wants to help himself.
That is why The Inquirer endorses Kamala Devi Harris to be the 47th president of the United States.
If elected, Harris, 60, would be the first Black, South Asian woman to hold the nation’s highest office. She rarely references her historic candidacy, and instead is laser-focused on earning votes through the substance of her vision, ideas, and temperament.” — Inquirer Editorial Staff
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
The agency will become responsible for the employer ni not the employer.
Tell me you don't have a clue how the agency worker market works without saying as much.
Put it this way - I don't remember any agencies increasing rates when employer NI was increased, I do remember many trying to cut it when the employer NI was cut.
The people impact where always the workers at the very bottom of the chain..
I know as much as you with access to the internet.
@lxeagle17 One of the "funnier" signals we have of a Kamala Harris victory is that I have *never* seen DC and corporate conventional wisdom more convinced of Trump running away with it than they are now.
It's really an election with no clear leader, but the GOP confidence is *astounding*.
These people have the worst vibes on earth (me included) and if they "feel" something, be skeptical. Insider vibes are the worst way to guess how the average American voter is going to react to anything.
The Republicans are projecting an image of a landslide and are hyped on early voting numbers in a way I have never seen before.
You can credibly construct an argument for Trump as a favorite, but we can do that for Harris too. The way people are buying it is incredible.
Democrats, with some justification, are still scarred from the 2016 experience and the fact Trump ran Biden a lot closer in 2020 than expected. I think it’s in their psyche to expect the worst now.
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
The agency will become responsible for the employer ni not the employer.
Tell me you don't have a clue how the agency worker market works without saying as much.
Put it this way - I don't remember any agencies increasing rates when employer NI was increased, I do remember many trying to cut it when the employer NI was cut.
The people impact where always the workers at the very bottom of the chain..
I know as much as you with access to the internet.
I strongly suspect that isn't the case - do you get invites to HMRC meetings?
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has reportedly given the newspaper a mandate to add more conservative voices to its opinion section — even as he remains silent over the broadsheet’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
This discussion around working people and those who struggle from pay day to pay day reminds me about Clegg's alarm clock Britain perspective from the early days of the coalition.
@lxeagle17 One of the "funnier" signals we have of a Kamala Harris victory is that I have *never* seen DC and corporate conventional wisdom more convinced of Trump running away with it than they are now.
It's really an election with no clear leader, but the GOP confidence is *astounding*.
These people have the worst vibes on earth (me included) and if they "feel" something, be skeptical. Insider vibes are the worst way to guess how the average American voter is going to react to anything.
The Republicans are projecting an image of a landslide and are hyped on early voting numbers in a way I have never seen before.
You can credibly construct an argument for Trump as a favorite, but we can do that for Harris too. The way people are buying it is incredible.
Democrats, with some justification, are still scarred from the 2016 experience and the fact Trump ran Biden a lot closer in 2020 than expected. I think it’s in their psyche to expect the worst now.
I think that's true in reverse too: Republicans - and especially Trump and his team - expect to outperform the polls.
And this chart is your regular reminder that the polls do occasionally get things wrong in the other direction:
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Irrespective of his record in government, Blair's greatest achievement was recognising that 'working people' were also aspirational people. They wanted to save, to own their own home, get promoted, start businesses, give their children a better start in life than they had, and pass on a little more wealth to to them.
I am under no illusion, life under the previous 14 years of Conservative government was far from aspirational. It was a grind, with most people feeling poorer and opportunities few and far between.
But rather than bringing back the politics of aspiration, Labour under Starmer and Reeves look set to choose the path of big government, tax and spend, redistributive policies (by which I largely mean redistributing from the private sector to the state).
That fits plausibly with a definition of a working person as someone who lives hand to mouth. It completely ignores the idea that a working person might ever aspire to be anything more. Where are the opportunities to get ahead in Starmer's Britain?
In my view it's less the middle aged millionaires buggering off we have to worry about - although that will happen - it's the twenty-somethings who feel there are no opportunities to get ahead in life, who will leave.
You know who else recognised the working class was aspirational? Ken Livingstone.
@lxeagle17 One of the "funnier" signals we have of a Kamala Harris victory is that I have *never* seen DC and corporate conventional wisdom more convinced of Trump running away with it than they are now.
It's really an election with no clear leader, but the GOP confidence is *astounding*.
These people have the worst vibes on earth (me included) and if they "feel" something, be skeptical. Insider vibes are the worst way to guess how the average American voter is going to react to anything.
The Republicans are projecting an image of a landslide and are hyped on early voting numbers in a way I have never seen before.
You can credibly construct an argument for Trump as a favorite, but we can do that for Harris too. The way people are buying it is incredible.
Along with AI, this is the biggest story in the world, yet almost no one talks about it
The fertility rate (as expressed by the number of births per woman) is still above replacement in over 90 countries including a significant part of sub-Saharan Africa - below replacement fertility is Europe, North and South America, India, China, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and some other places.
Niger, Chad, Somalia and DR Congo all have above 6 births per woman so we can postulate in 15-20 years we could be facing a surge of immigration from those parts of the world unless we see the kind of economic investment and growth which creates the conditions encouraging people to stay.
I've long thought the future of capitalism lies in Africa if you continue to want a source of cheap labour (all other issues notwithstanding) or want to develop a part of the world hitherto largely neglected (China). Africa as the world's economic powerhouse by 2050 - who knows?
The other questions about which, as you say, no one wants to talk are first will there be an "Africanisation" (horrible word, can't think of anything else?) of Europe and other parts of the world and what will that mean for the indigenous populations (diminishing as they may be) and second, what measures (if any) could or should the rest of the world take to raise fertility rates?
Along with AI, this is the biggest story in the world, yet almost no one talks about it
The trouble is it's a bit like watching the R-rate during Covid but in super, super slow motion.
All politicians know it's a problem. Some are trying to do something to half the decline, to varying degrees of relative success. But that real world impact of declining fertility rates plays out over decades rather than weeks or months.
It is, of course, intrinsically linked with countries' migration policies, whether they have net immigration or emmigration.
South Korea may be bad, but imagine the same fertility rates happening in a country where there is a greater tradition of young people emmigrating...
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
This discussion around working people and those who struggle from pay day to pay day reminds me about Clegg's alarm clock Britain perspective from the early days of the coalition.
And Osborne's "strivers" - coined to paint people on welfare as "scroungers".
Along with AI, this is the biggest story in the world, yet almost no one talks about it
The fertility rate (as expressed by the number of births per woman) is still above replacement in over 90 countries including a significant part of sub-Saharan Africa - below replacement fertility is Europe, North and South America, India, China, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and some other places.
Niger, Chad, Somalia and DR Congo all have above 6 births per woman so we can postulate in 15-20 years we could be facing a surge of immigration from those parts of the world unless we see the kind of economic investment and growth which creates the conditions encouraging people to stay.
I've long thought the future of capitalism lies in Africa if you continue to want a source of cheap labour (all other issues notwithstanding) or want to develop a part of the world hitherto largely neglected (China). Africa as the world's economic powerhouse by 2050 - who knows?
The other questions about which, as you say, no one wants to talk are first will there be an "Africanisation" (horrible word, can't think of anything else?) of Europe and other parts of the world and what will that mean for the indigenous populations (diminishing as they may be) and second, what measures (if any) could or should the rest of the world take to raise fertility rates?
I think the western alliance is due to strengthen ties against recent trends, precisely because the U.S. will need the rest of us to counterbalance the other power blocks.
@lxeagle17 One of the "funnier" signals we have of a Kamala Harris victory is that I have *never* seen DC and corporate conventional wisdom more convinced of Trump running away with it than they are now.
It's really an election with no clear leader, but the GOP confidence is *astounding*.
These people have the worst vibes on earth (me included) and if they "feel" something, be skeptical. Insider vibes are the worst way to guess how the average American voter is going to react to anything.
The Republicans are projecting an image of a landslide and are hyped on early voting numbers in a way I have never seen before.
You can credibly construct an argument for Trump as a favorite, but we can do that for Harris too. The way people are buying it is incredible.
Democrats, with some justification, are still scarred from the 2016 experience and the fact Trump ran Biden a lot closer in 2020 than expected. I think it’s in their psyche to expect the worst now.
I think that's true in reverse too: Republicans - and especially Trump and his team - expect to outperform the polls.
And this chart is your regular reminder that the polls do occasionally get things wrong in the other direction:
There's much more push back against the extreme vilification of Trump than there was in previous elections, so despite them dialling it up to 'Hitler', the overall landscape is more balanced and support for Trump is more respectable.
Megyn Kelly on Bill Maher this week is a good example (worth watching for his bizarre view that Hitler was ok in the 1930s):
This discussion around working people and those who struggle from pay day to pay day reminds me about Clegg's alarm clock Britain perspective from the early days of the coalition.
And Osborne's "strivers" - coined to paint people on welfare as "scroungers".
"Do they call it welfare cos it's well fair?" - Ali G.
Along with AI, this is the biggest story in the world, yet almost no one talks about it
The fertility rate (as expressed by the number of births per woman) is still above replacement in over 90 countries including a significant part of sub-Saharan Africa - below replacement fertility is Europe, North and South America, India, China, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand and some other places.
Niger, Chad, Somalia and DR Congo all have above 6 births per woman so we can postulate in 15-20 years we could be facing a surge of immigration from those parts of the world unless we see the kind of economic investment and growth which creates the conditions encouraging people to stay.
I've long thought the future of capitalism lies in Africa if you continue to want a source of cheap labour (all other issues notwithstanding) or want to develop a part of the world hitherto largely neglected (China). Africa as the world's economic powerhouse by 2050 - who knows?
The other questions about which, as you say, no one wants to talk are first will there be an "Africanisation" (horrible word, can't think of anything else?) of Europe and other parts of the world and what will that mean for the indigenous populations (diminishing as they may be) and second, what measures (if any) could or should the rest of the world take to raise fertility rates?
Is there any particular reason the government are making such a big deal of the budget?
It's all we've heard about for weeks if not months and now Starmer's doing a "pre budget speech"
I can't remember such a big build up to a budget before. Odd.
Starmer doubling down on this “service of working people” stuff despite nobody in government really being that clear on what a working person is. Most odd messaging.
As far as I can tell, his definition of 'working person' means people living hand to mouth. Zero savings, zero investments, just a monthly pay cheque that goes in at the end of the month and is spent by the end of the next.
Since that's probably over half the UK he's probably right in that they will not immediately notice much difference. Except on fuel duty or the end of the £2 flat fare bus fee, so commuting costs likely to rise substantially.
But if you have any ambition, are a saver, an investor, or a higher income earner - anyone over 50k - expect to get clobbered.
And with regards the Employer's NI rise, one good comment on the FT today (not me, I promise), states: raising tax on alcohol reduces alcohol consumption, tax on smoking reduces smoking. What does raising tax on employment do?
The winners here are going to be anyone who works in the public sector. This budget will rebalance the economy away from private sector jobs towards public sector ones - it's that simple.
It might be a recipe for improving public services like the NHS (or the money might all end up spaffed up the wall on middle managers as it usually does). But it will certainly be harmful to the private sector, and, ultimately, growth.
Back to the 70s - tax the private sector and private individuals until the pips squeak, redistribute the wealth through the public sector. Wonder why the economy isn't growing.
The sans culottes.
Let's face it, most people don't have "investments" and apart from maybe a sinking fund in case of emergency expenses, not much in savings either. Increasingly everything is a monthly payment which seems designed to milk people of their monthly salary, eg car leases. Add mortgage etc and many people do not carry much forward at the end of the month, however much they earn. Also inflation has been 10% recently, and interest rates have gone up, many people will have gone from being able to save a significant proportion of their earnings every month to nothing at all. I fear that this board is not representative and certainly doesn't understand people whose only or main earnings are as an employee.
One in three adults have less than £1000 in savings.
He may be rubbish at expressing it, but Starmer has a point.
I think he does, absolutely. I think the two questions that arise from that are (a) how you improve people’s economic position so as to encourage and allow for more saving and (b) do the people outside of that bracket not count as working people?
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
If you have income from investments then that's income but not work. Your salary or any bonuses your employer pays are the result of your work, not your investments which are a result of savings.
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
Employers NI was hiding in plain sight. Laura Trott (or a SPAD acting on her behalf) noticed it at the time. It's just that nobody was listening to the Conservatives when they released this.
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
The problem SKS has is that he said it's not going to appear on people's payslips.
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24% 2) reduce employee NI to 4/5% 3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
Not showing on people's payslips is a figure of speech. It still means the employee won't pay extra.
??? as an agency worker chances are you are being paid an assignment rate - that 2% increase in NI is coming from the £16 you are getting...
The agency will become responsible for the employer ni not the employer.
Tell me you don't have a clue how the agency worker market works without saying as much.
Put it this way - I don't remember any agencies increasing rates when employer NI was increased, I do remember many trying to cut it when the employer NI was cut.
The people impact where always the workers at the very bottom of the chain..
I know as much as you with access to the internet.
I strongly suspect that isn't the case - do you get invites to HMRC meetings?
Reform has to go all in on any Mike Amesbury by-election, or risk looking like all mouth and no trousers, doesn’t it?
Does not look like a winner for the Tories or LibDems on the face of it.
Yes;
That said, doesn't Mr Amesbury need to be charged, convicted, and then get a custodial sentence?
Bound to get a suspension worthy of a recall petition isn’t he?
Suspensions, I think, are usually for stuff you did in the Commons or around your role as an MP, not for unrelated possible criminality, yes…? Although Margaret Ferrier is an edge case, I guess.
@lxeagle17 One of the "funnier" signals we have of a Kamala Harris victory is that I have *never* seen DC and corporate conventional wisdom more convinced of Trump running away with it than they are now.
It's really an election with no clear leader, but the GOP confidence is *astounding*.
These people have the worst vibes on earth (me included) and if they "feel" something, be skeptical. Insider vibes are the worst way to guess how the average American voter is going to react to anything.
The Republicans are projecting an image of a landslide and are hyped on early voting numbers in a way I have never seen before.
You can credibly construct an argument for Trump as a favorite, but we can do that for Harris too. The way people are buying it is incredible.
Democrats, with some justification, are still scarred from the 2016 experience and the fact Trump ran Biden a lot closer in 2020 than expected. I think it’s in their psyche to expect the worst now.
I think that's true in reverse too: Republicans - and especially Trump and his team - expect to outperform the polls.
And this chart is your regular reminder that the polls do occasionally get things wrong in the other direction:
There's much more push back against the extreme vilification of Trump than there was in previous elections, so despite them dialling it up to 'Hitler', the overall landscape is more balanced and support for Trump is more respectable.
Megyn Kelly on Bill Maher this week is a good example (worth watching for his bizarre view that Hitler was ok in the 1930s):
Comments
Only the 3rd time in my entire life.
*This is I think is because in the past developers did not do it until the end and then could avoid eg by simply not finishing, or making the company for the particular development bust. So partly self-inflicted, though it's more complex than that with other causes such as Housing Association funding, building regs becoming more demanding next year so these this year's houses will need retrofit etc.
Quite a few causes, and worth a listen imo.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0024dfv
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50752-who-did-britons-want-to-win-the-2024-us-presidential-election
Assuming good memories of how votes were cast and so on, I make that group 21.8% of the voters, and 13.8% of the whole electorate.
The issue he faces now is the issue with definition and terminology. “Working people” wasn’t the right definition if he only meant people working wage packet to wage packet, but he keeps banging on about it. I have a fear he doesn’t have an answer to (a).
https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1850707911569277368
.. among GOP operatives and staffers under 30 or so the majority, maybe the great majority had their political awakenings on sites like 4chan, 8chan, various far-right, incel and incel adjacent online communities. It crops up in various ways if you know where to look. It's why DeSantis had those weird frankly homoerotic campaign vids during the primaries...
...If you followed D politics in the 80s, 90s, aughts, you knew that pretty much all the big people, the candidates, the powerful operatives had all first met on the McGovern campaign. Almost didn't matter whether they were on the right or left of the party. That was the formative experience for all of them. In 2036 in the GOP it's going to be 4chan...
Nothing wrong with that, but it's absurd to say it isn't clear. The taxes on working are income tax and national insurance (both kinds).
Labour are breaking their pledge by increasing Employers NI, that is a direct taxation of wages in the same way as fuel duty or alcohol duty are direct taxes of those, even if you don't see it on your payslip.
If we have a student age person in our midst, you are going to have to be caught and studied carefully
Oh, but it’s WildernessPt2. Denying reality and pandering to fascism is to be expected.
VAT is the most obvious example of an indirect tax - it's paid by the shop, who is liable for it, but added to the customer's bill.
Employer's NI is like that. In practice, the employer is liable for it, though the hit is on the employee. So it's indirect. Employee NI, OTOH, is a direct tax, as is income tax.
Of course governments love indirect taxes, as they are much easier to hide, though direct taxes can be hidden too, so that people don't think about them that much, e.g. by PAYE.
No holds barred.
I would guess that Labour's "working people" is somewhat less than half the amount of my definition.
https://public.conservatives.com/publicweb/GE2024/18 Tax rises.pdf
Whether it's a good tax to raise, or even the least bad one, is well beyond my pay grade. But any government elected in 2024 had a fiscal gap of £700 per person to close.
But they REALLY like baseball
25% of 2019 Tories voted Reform in July but only 17% voted Labour or LD
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election
Reform are now on 19 and 20% in the latest polls due to gains from Labour since the GE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
"So nobody knows nuthin’. But, if I had to place a very modest bet, no more than, say, a Kistler chardonnay, I’d say he’s going to win."
But agency workers get a payment reconciliation document as part of their payslip and that will start off with the agreed rate and then show an employer NI deduction as part of the calculations to determine the worker's gross pay.
And as I said on Saturday a decent plan would be:-
1) increase income tax to 24%
2) reduce employee NI to 4/5%
3) keep the WFP for all pensioners
and that would mean pensioners with an income over £20,000 are the people taking some of the hit.
😂😂😂
https://x.com/JimBlower/status/1850798733182554260
Meanwhile, I hope I'm not alone in finding it easy to know what is meant by 'working people'. It's people who work, and get paid, for a living. Employees, largely, but also many self-employed. And it doesn't matter if your wage is £10k or £100k - you're still a working person.
If it reduces the harm caused by strikes, yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
What’s more, you can FEEL it and SEE it
“Voters face an easy but tectonic choice in the race for the White House.
Will they choose the first woman or the oldest man to be the next president?
Will they choose the prosecutor or the convict?
Will they choose the candidate who supports restoring Roe v. Wade, or the man who bragged about overturning it?
Will they choose the candidate with a tax plan to help the middle class or the one who wants to help the superrich?
Will they choose the candidate who backs a tough bipartisan immigration law or the guy who killed the measure?
Will they choose the candidate who wants to combat climate change or the one who thinks it is a hoax?
Will they choose the candidate who upholds the peaceful transfer of power or the one who summoned a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol?
Will they choose the candidate who stands up to Vladimir Putin or the one who said Russia could do “whatever the hell they want”?
Will they choose the candidate who champions education, health care for all, and sensible gun safety laws, or the person who wants to close the U.S. Department of Education, repeal Obamacare, and told supporters after a school shooting to “get over it”?
Will they choose the candidate who supports the working class or the one who is anti-union and opposed raising the minimum wage?
Will they choose a woman of color who wants to unite the country, or a man with a history of misogynistic, racist, and divisive comments and actions?
Will they choose the candidate who supports LGBTQ rights or the one who wants to roll back protections for the gay community?
Will they choose the candidate who will uphold the presidential oath, or the one who was impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, profited from the White House, dangled pardons to cronies, and was indicted four times?
This baker’s dozen list could go on, but the choice is clear and obvious. Vice President Kamala Harris wants to help all Americans.
Donald Trump wants to help himself.
That is why The Inquirer endorses Kamala Devi Harris to be the 47th president of the United States.
If elected, Harris, 60, would be the first Black, South Asian woman to hold the nation’s highest office. She rarely references her historic candidacy, and instead is laser-focused on earning votes through the substance of her vision, ideas, and temperament.” — Inquirer Editorial Staff
Russian stocks appear to be tanking today almost back down to where they were at the end of the summer. Perhaps inevitable after the rise in base rate to 21% with perhaps more to come. Ukraine knocking out some of their oil refineries whilst the Saudis increase production to compensate would be the perfect double whammy.
https://archive.is/m9QoN/c23861720c8c708e20b142a19684aa90cd5f00c0.avif
At the lower bound of the minimum wage that is not true. So employers NIC becomes a direct tax on employers employing.
This then economically could lead to fewer jobs and greater efficiencies and productivity.
Elsewhere it depends on the dynamics in the Labour market. For public sector jobs which are subject to salary review bodies this may also not be true if the treasury is making the department whole for increases in employers NIC. However the efficiency argument here only applies if the treasury does not keep the departments whole.
Put it this way - I don't remember any agencies increasing rates when employer NI was increased, I do remember many trying to cut it when the employer NI was cut.
The people impact where always the workers at the very bottom of the chain..
One of the "funnier" signals we have of a Kamala Harris victory is that I have *never* seen DC and corporate conventional wisdom more convinced of Trump running away with it than they are now.
It's really an election with no clear leader, but the GOP confidence is *astounding*.
These people have the worst vibes on earth (me included) and if they "feel" something, be skeptical. Insider vibes are the worst way to guess how the average American voter is going to react to anything.
The Republicans are projecting an image of a landslide and are hyped on early voting numbers in a way I have never seen before.
You can credibly construct an argument for Trump as a favorite, but we can do that for Harris too. The way people are buying it is incredible.
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1850703883460653313
I started when I was in my late 50's, under a scheme run by the NHS for degree-less employees.
There's so much talk still about "class" and that's before where you were educated or where you live or how you voted in 2016. The compartmentalisation of society makes scapegoating easier - blame the pensioners, the young, those on welfare, the wealthy, the foreigners etc, etc. Populism thrives on that scapegoating, that demonising of whole groups because they are somehpw "different" or are "favoured" etc, etc.
As for the finances, the budget deficit numbers are bad but not as disastrous as some on here would lead me to believe. Hopefully we'll see a big tax payment in January to reduce the numbers overall - I'd rather we had no deficit at all but the journey to that nirvana remains just out of reach. We still borrow too much and the debt interest payments are an unfortunate removal of funds which could be used elsewhere.
Any increase in employer NI will reduce the inside IR35 worker's net pay.
The inside IR35 but not an employee status should be dispensed with, it should be employed with full employee rights or contractor with the associated independence Inc tax status. Employers are being allowed to take the piss.
How can the fertility rate *per mother* be less than 1.0?!?
Surely by definition any mother has an individual fertility rate of at least 1?
Some interesting historical photographs of Nazi rallies at Maddison Square Gardens in days gone by
Any increase in employer NI will reduce the inside IR35 worker's net pay.
The inside IR35 but not an employee status should be dispensed with, it should be employed with full employee rights or contractor with the associated independence Inc tax status. Employers are being allowed to take the piss.
Care to guess the one area of employment that is completely ignored within the 2024 Employment Rights Bill
If you guessed agency / umbrella workers you are 100% correct...
Even the umbrella industry wants regulation because of the number of tax avoidance schemes or other issues yet it quickly goes into the too difficult category when the Government looks at it..
What a contrast to the craven Washington Post.
Oh, well...
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has reportedly given the newspaper a mandate to add more conservative voices to its opinion section — even as he remains silent over the broadsheet’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
Does not look like a winner for the Tories or LibDems on the face of it.
And this chart is your regular reminder that the polls do occasionally get things wrong in the other direction:
That said, doesn't Mr Amesbury need to be charged, convicted, and then get a custodial sentence?
And after that we can have a recall petition.
Or did I get that wrong?
If Republicans are convinced they are going to win, why go to the trouble of voting?
It's a GOTV election.
Niger, Chad, Somalia and DR Congo all have above 6 births per woman so we can postulate in 15-20 years we could be facing a surge of immigration from those parts of the world unless we see the kind of economic investment and growth which creates the conditions encouraging people to stay.
I've long thought the future of capitalism lies in Africa if you continue to want a source of cheap labour (all other issues notwithstanding) or want to develop a part of the world hitherto largely neglected (China). Africa as the world's economic powerhouse by 2050 - who knows?
The other questions about which, as you say, no one wants to talk are first will there be an "Africanisation" (horrible word, can't think of anything else?) of Europe and other parts of the world and what will that mean for the indigenous populations (diminishing as they may be) and second, what measures (if any) could or should the rest of the world take to raise fertility rates?
Except the circumstances in which Sam earlier replaced Jas as PPC to replace Mike Gapes were pretty murky too.
All politicians know it's a problem. Some are trying to do something to half the decline, to varying degrees of relative success. But that real world impact of declining fertility rates plays out over decades rather than weeks or months.
It is, of course, intrinsically linked with countries' migration policies, whether they have net immigration or emmigration.
South Korea may be bad, but imagine the same fertility rates happening in a country where there is a greater tradition of young people emmigrating...
Megyn Kelly on Bill Maher this week is a good example (worth watching for his bizarre view that Hitler was ok in the 1930s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=348sBfn7OzM
Of course, he could just choose to resign.