I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
As I mentioned yesterday, just under £10k of that is higher rate Personal Independence Payment to help her live with severe disability, which is not means tested and would also be received by her if she had a £50k income.
So I think the number you are wanting to compare is more like £24k than £33k.
(Update: plus the pre-tax / post tax as mentioned by @Pulpstar .
But the LHA will not be taxed either, I think.)
These are complex comparisons, as Frances Ryan in the Guardian keeps finding out when she gets not quite right.
On topic, the joy of politics is that the counterfactual can turn into the factual.
Truss was right.
We need economic growth and we need it consistently over a sustained period. We have cut and shrunk, shrunk and cut our economy over a long period, with the biggest contraction in the last decade when we were at our most vulnerable.
Truss was wrong in that she thought the way to growth was slash taxes and spending, but she also wanted investment. Borrowing to invest - and the delivering a return on that investment - is NOT bad economics. It is capitalism. And when the state borrows to invest in capacity, skills and infrastructure it has a long-term benefit.
At the same time, we need to cut the crap. We had dug ourselves into the ground when it comes to digging into the ground. We spend hundreds of millions on reports and surveys and impact assessments *without actually building anything*. The Tories gamed house planning so that the developers always beat the council. Not that the developers built what was needed. Do the same but *for the state*. We need to build this, it's going here, please accept this mitigation (or don't), start building. For housing we must have local people involved as its their communities being expanded, but the answer cannot just be "no".
Sadly I expect nothing from the Chancellor to drive growth, to drive investment, to try and course correct the UK so that we're comparable with France or Germany or Spain or the Netherlands or any of the rest of European nations who aren't as crushed by cuts as we are. Unless she pulls a massive rabbit out of the hat, Labour have already failed.
You're still assuming that every 'investment' generates a positive return.
That's not true in betting, that's not true in business and most of all its not true when government does it.
And yet if you look at successful economies internationally they invest a lot more than we do, typically including state investment.
We have a weird phobia of state investment here.
Perhaps other countries are better at the state investment than the land of nimbyism.
But if we want more state investment I suggest we build some more roads - actually one of the things this country can do pretty well.
There's quite a backlog of necessary infrastructure investment that I'm past arguing for investment in one thing over another. Britain needs to: Build Roads Build Heathrow runways three and four Build HS2, HS3, NPR and keep on electrifying the railways Build tidal power Build nuclear power Build renewables, pylons and storage Build EV chargers, lots of them Build houses, and towns Build tunnels and bridges Allow people to build factories And somehow keep on paying the bills until the economy grows in response.
Thats all needed but we also need to invest in people as risky and Gordon Brown like as that is. The justice system is probably the most obvious example for this. Austerity went too deep and lasted way too long and there is a price to be paid to get back on track.
The awful floods in Valencia appear to be an instance of "la gota fria" or "cold drop", a well-known weather phenomenon on that part of the Mediterranean coast Wiki: "This type of storm is also known as an isolated depression/anticyclone occurring at high altitude/troposphere (DANA in Spanish – depresión aislada en niveles altos[4])."
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
As I mentioned yesterday, just under £10k of that is Personal Independence Payment, which is not means tested and would also be received by her if she had a £50k income.
So the number you are wanting to compare is more like £24k than £33k.
Well that raises another question...if she did earn £50k+ a year, should she receive £10k a PIP? What about £100k a year? That seems like an awful lot of money as a benefit and still be earning a high wage.
The corporate tax roadmap will be one of the bright spots and has been well consulted. Aside from possible employer NI rises this one is looking pretty decent for companies, all things considered.
Is it ? Well over half the anticipated tax increases fall on employers - and the well above inflation minimum wage rise will also drive up employment costs. Businesses employing few people will do fairly well; the rest get something of a caning.
Whether that all works out depends a lot on what's done on the spending side.
Obviously teh workers will pay for it , private companies do not have a magic money treee like the public sector. Means either employing less people or no wage rises till they make up the losses. Economics for idiots.
Business employing fewer people and increasing efficiency is actually a good thing for our economy if you look at it from a macro perspective.
So long as:
1. Efficiency actually rises, rather than the company contracting or failing to expand overall. 2. The changes don’t lead to an increase in unemployment.
There is huge unfulfilled demand for staff in several sectors, including health care, care and construction. Now the reality is a lot of people don't want those jobs but I think we are a long way from significant unemployment regardless.
NHS employment is at an all time high (I believe) - 1.3M FTE and up 30% since 2009.
Have we all got that much sicker over time? What are all those people doing?
Dealing with us getting older. And older, and older.
It's a contributory factor, but a small one. This is one of the few things I know quite a bit about.
Most assessments of UK health spending find that increased chronic conditions and better technology (keeping people alive) are the reasons it's increasing so much. England's demographics are actually quite balanced due to immigration, yet their spending has increased just as much as ours has in Scotland.
Most demographic-linked spending in the UK is made in the last 12 months or so of life. You-only-die-once, so that doesn't matter too much except in the 2030s when we have lots of Boomers reaching their 80s. But a small blip, relatively.
The old traditional heart attacks (or strokes) that finish you off in one go are much cheaper to deal with. Cancers, particularly those with effective but expensive treatments and heart attacks/strokes that are survived can have much longer long term costs. Not to mention the costs of things like Parkinsons and Alzheimers (although a lot of that is more in social than medical care, unless hospitalised - which can happen in part due to limitations in social care).
It's obviously great that we've got much better at stopping people from dying suddenly in their 60s*/early 70s, but the costs in healthcare and pensions and social care are a challenge we have to deal with.
*Alex Salmond came as a bit of a shock, but there would have been many more slightly portly politicians dying at similar ages in the past.
I count myself extremely lucky that my DVT resulted in my cardiologist making an urgent appointment for me to have a pacemaker
If I had not had my DVT (which was unrelated) then I would not have known I had an aneuryism and serious atrial fibulation
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
A third of properties are owned outright by their households.
If the Tories were delivering this budget I can guarantee all the people saying it is wrong for taxes to go up would be cheering this on.
Well we have examples from the recent past. When Sunak was introducing NI++ and putting NI up, those right leaning were most definitely not cheering. The reaction was WTF is he doing, absolute muppet.
So what would they do differently?
We have done this loads previously. The obvious things to do, you get rid of the cliff edges at £50-60k and £100-120k, you merge NI/ IC, if you do this the right way you get more tax from the top edge, you get rid of the current system that nudges people to work / earn less.
But my question would be, why did they not do this in the 14 years they were in government?
Because they bottled it, then Brexit, then COVID. Combining NI / IC is a big move. However, the cliff edges there were no excuses.
But your original post was right leaning people would be cheering previous government raising NI, they most certainly weren't.
The problem is that Labour will now just play the “you had 14 years and look what you did” card.
I don’t know much about combining NI and IC but as I am very close to a cliff edge as you call it, it does intrigue me.
The problem is it would create winners and losers. The obvious losers being pensioners (who don't pay NI) and thy are far more likely to resent the change than the winners are to be grateful.
If the 20% basic rate was increased to 25% and NI abolished then an increase in the tax allowance to circa £15,000 would address the issue
Indeed Sunak and Hunt's long term aim was to do something on these lines
And this comes back to the principle error labour made by ring fencing tax, NI and VAT which accounts for 75% of the tax take
Except Sunak and Hunt only cut NI and didn't do the other bit because their voter base was pensioners.
If they had really wanted to implement what they claimed to want NI would be at 6% and income tax at 22% because that is complete tax neutral for workers...
They did freeze the personal tax allowance which came as a shock to quite a few pensioners who found themselves paying more tax.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
You're generally gaining equity if you're paying to the bank though. And (hopefully) you'll eventually own outright. Increasing the OO to rental mix is important in the round as the last thing a country needs is pensioners that need state support for their housing costs (On top of everything else).
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
It's fucking nuts.
I would reject the whole concept of "personal independence payments". People shouldn't drown but I don't agree the State should provide them with sufficient income that they would have had if they were working full-time to live a full and independent life, if they happen to be misfortunate enough to suffer from a mix of physical and mental ailments. I'd have to go and live with my family or friends if I fell on hard times and, well, that's life. I wouldn't expect the general taxpayer to keep me in my own place.
Instead, they can be supported to subsist in their communities or with their extended friends and family and government support should be directed at giving them some form of employment and support to employers to take them, and then any extra they earn can be used to increase their independence.
My aunt has MS. I am very grateful to live in a society that allows her to live with a small measure of independence and dignity and more than happy that my taxes contribute to that.
...“What Donald Trump has never understood is that ‘E pluribus unum,’ out of many one, isn’t just a phrase on a dollar bill. It is a living truth about the heart of our nation. Our democracy, it doesn’t require us to agree on anything,” she added. “And the fact that someone disagrees with us does not make them the enemy within.” “Unlike Donald Trump, I don’t believe people who disagree with me are the enemy. He wants to put them in jail. I’ll give them a seat at the table,”..
More proof of the truth universally acknowledged, that Trump can say the most egregious shit that insults everyone in the country and get away with it, whereas Harris and her campaign have to be perfect and the slightest gaffe buries them.
It’s like the difference between the Tories and the Lib Dems in the coalition.
It's really really weird, and a public thing not just a media thing, to be inured to all but the most egregious Trump comments but see the entire Harris campaign as undermined by single slips or statements.
The BBC does exactly the same. Their R4 US news led on Biden's gaffe, and barely mentioned Harris's speech. Despite his not being the candidate.
Plus they they went with the line that Biden 'claimed' he wasn't speaking about all Trump supporters. The silly auld fud misspoke but he's been in the business of seeking votes long enough and has enough functioning synapses to not think all Trump supporters are garbage.
I’d be fascinated to find out the circumstances of how Biden came to endorse her so soon after announcing his withdrawal. He acts like he can’t stand her. Was it just to spite the likes of Obama, who mostly likely were pushing for an open convention? He robbed us of telly level drama with the endorsement the bugger!
It was worse than that. Biden announced he was standing down in a written memo, but with no mention of anything else and no video statement (the suggestion was that he was taken ill, and was persuaded to stand aside at that point). It was a couple of days later, presumably after a lot of talking among the upper echelons of the Party, that he endorsed Harris, again with a written statement.
It was argued, at the time, that rather than crowning Harris, it had to come from the Party first. Then endorse *after* that.
Certainly, the whole party united behind her. All the potential contenders endorsed her. That part of the process went off better than anyone expected.
Given there is momentum to the idea of this as a change election, I think it’s actually the part that went far worse than expected. They could have opened the field and picked almost any of the others, and they’d have been a more credible pick than she has been.
There is an unreality here and elsewhere to the idea that she is any way a normal or impressive candidate. Trump’s opponent should be miles ahead given all the water under his bridge. And we should all be sat here with a much clearer idea of their agenda and have higher confidence in it.
On the other side given the economy - the Republican candidate should be winning this election by a landslide.
The fact they are not doing so shows how toxic Trump is to many voters...
I think that's why this election is so hard to call both sides deserve to lose it..
Yes that’s exactly right. Either Haley or someone like Whitmer would be running away with this.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
If the Tories were delivering this budget I can guarantee all the people saying it is wrong for taxes to go up would be cheering this on.
Well we have examples from the recent past. When Sunak was introducing NI++ and putting NI up, those right leaning were most definitely not cheering. The reaction was WTF is he doing, absolute muppet.
So what would they do differently?
We have done this loads previously. The obvious things to do, you get rid of the cliff edges at £50-60k and £100-120k, you merge NI/ IC, if you do this the right way you get more tax from the top edge, you get rid of the current system that nudges people to work / earn less.
But my question would be, why did they not do this in the 14 years they were in government?
Because they bottled it, then Brexit, then COVID. Combining NI / IC is a big move. However, the cliff edges there were no excuses.
But your original post was right leaning people would be cheering previous government raising NI, they most certainly weren't.
The problem is that Labour will now just play the “you had 14 years and look what you did” card.
I don’t know much about combining NI and IC but as I am very close to a cliff edge as you call it, it does intrigue me.
The problem is it would create winners and losers. The obvious losers being pensioners (who don't pay NI) and thy are far more likely to resent the change than the winners are to be grateful.
Here's something I prepared earlier on NIC/IT consolidation:
1) Small impact on pensioners as most do not have incomes that are affected by top rates of income tax 2) People on top 10% income are the group hit most significantly 3) Middle/high incomes (deciles 5-9) do much better 4) Overall, over 50% of households better off 5) Great for in-work households with dependent children, particularly single parents 6) Significant drop in Universal Credit bill as tax burden is reduced for low/medium earners with children (again, a big chunk of this is single parents) 7) Increase in child poverty because median incomes increase while those with no earnings don't benefit (perverse effect of the relative poverty calculation)
However, don't think that flat percentage increase in income tax is sensible because it bumps lots of high earners into >50% marginal tax rates. You'd need to moderate it, so the effects described above would be watered down somewhat.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
I was equally struck by the BBC's relentless drive to squeeze a fetishing trans person into every single item on their news website. More gaslighting.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
You're generally gaining equity if you're paying to the bank though.
Sure, but we know huge numbers of people can't get on the house ladder, even on £50k a year. You can't just say yeah but that's not real money because you don't physically get the reddies in your hand. Most people are paying off student loans from their wages, they never see that, but for tax purposes you don't write that off the top line.
If they do, they might not want to share on here to avoid the wrath of the board.
Really? I'd congratulate anyone who correctly called the US election and got a nice win from a Trump victory. I'd be horrified at the result, but betting should be head over heart. I'd have bet on the Orange One if I'd believed he had a good chance when the odds were appealing.
Not at all in the same league of horror, but I did quite nicely out of Con seat bands - higher than poll projections - and a couple of constituency bets (e.g. Sunak) at the GE even though I'm very far from a supporter of the last government.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Because we sold it all and didn't build any replacements.
Who knew garbage would play such a big role in the last week of the campaign !
Biden shouldn’t have been doing a zoom call at exactly the same time as the Harris speech and I do think this will have harmed her campaign . Not in terms of losing votes of those already voting for her but It could help GOP turnout .
The Harris message of moving on from the division and trying to unite the country was hit by the Biden gaffe or apostrophe gate!
She needs to come out with something in response today , as to what that might be not sure yet !
This however does give her more license to break from Biden , those who were pissed off that he was dumped must surely realize now that he would have been a disaster if he had stayed on the ticket .
Something along these lines ?
Vice President Harris: Those who disagree with us are not ‘the enemy within,’ as Trump says. They are our fellow Americans. It is time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time for a new generation of leadership https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1851412514854019358
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Harris has run the best campaign she could and there was no way after Biden stepped aside that the Dems could pick a different candidate . She just needs Biden to stfu for the next week !
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
If we are going down that evaluation route, then we have to start counting how much Aldi, the Bus Company and all the rest get .
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
You're generally gaining equity if you're paying to the bank though.
Sure, but we know huge numbers of people can't get on the house ladder, even on £50k a year. You can't just say yeah but that's not real money.
You also won't be getting housing benefit if you own your property (even with a mortgage).
The fix is a lot of social housing but that costs money and creates a whole set of different issues except for the fact we need to build a couple of millions houses ASAP to match our actual population.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
I believe the right to buy is correct for tenants, the right to buy at a massive discount however is effectively the right to beggar councils long term and should be stopped by Rayner yesterday.
If the Tories were delivering this budget I can guarantee all the people saying it is wrong for taxes to go up would be cheering this on.
Well we have examples from the recent past. When Sunak was introducing NI++ and putting NI up, those right leaning were most definitely not cheering. The reaction was WTF is he doing, absolute muppet.
So what would they do differently?
We have done this loads previously. The obvious things to do, you get rid of the cliff edges at £50-60k and £100-120k, you merge NI/ IC, if you do this the right way you get more tax from the top edge, you get rid of the current system that nudges people to work / earn less.
But my question would be, why did they not do this in the 14 years they were in government?
Because they bottled it, then Brexit, then COVID. Combining NI / IC is a big move. However, the cliff edges there were no excuses.
But your original post was right leaning people would be cheering previous government raising NI, they most certainly weren't.
The problem is that Labour will now just play the “you had 14 years and look what you did” card.
I don’t know much about combining NI and IC but as I am very close to a cliff edge as you call it, it does intrigue me.
The problem is it would create winners and losers. The obvious losers being pensioners (who don't pay NI) and thy are far more likely to resent the change than the winners are to be grateful.
Here's something I prepared earlier on NIC/IT consolidation:
1) Small impact on pensioners as most do not have incomes that are affected by top rates of income tax 2) People on top 10% income are the group hit most significantly 3) Middle/high incomes (deciles 5-9) do much better 4) Overall, over 50% of households better off 5) Great for in-work households with dependent children, particularly single parents 6) Significant drop in Universal Credit bill as tax burden is reduced for low/medium earners with children (again, a big chunk of this is single parents) 7) Increase in child poverty because median incomes increase while those with no earnings don't benefit (perverse effect of the relative poverty calculation)
However, don't think that flat percentage increase in income tax is sensible because it bumps lots of high earners into >50% marginal tax rates. You'd need to moderate it, so the effects described above would be watered down somewhat.
One reason that politicians will give you for having NI separate is so that the taxation*sounds* less. See the bit about income tax going over 50% when you merge in NI...
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Because those houses don't currently exist so it would require the council / housing association to receive a lot of money to actually build those houses...
Have any of you listened to 'The Coming Storm' on Radio 4. It sounded interesting and may listen on BBC Sounds. Would appreciate feedback.
One comment that I had never heard before was a reference by some MAGA people referring to America as 'A Republic, not a Democracy' as if they are mutually exclusive. That is new to me, if true.
If the Tories were delivering this budget I can guarantee all the people saying it is wrong for taxes to go up would be cheering this on.
Well we have examples from the recent past. When Sunak was introducing NI++ and putting NI up, those right leaning were most definitely not cheering. The reaction was WTF is he doing, absolute muppet.
So what would they do differently?
We have done this loads previously. The obvious things to do, you get rid of the cliff edges at £50-60k and £100-120k, you merge NI/ IC, if you do this the right way you get more tax from the top edge, you get rid of the current system that nudges people to work / earn less.
But my question would be, why did they not do this in the 14 years they were in government?
Because they bottled it, then Brexit, then COVID. Combining NI / IC is a big move. However, the cliff edges there were no excuses.
But your original post was right leaning people would be cheering previous government raising NI, they most certainly weren't.
The problem is that Labour will now just play the “you had 14 years and look what you did” card.
I don’t know much about combining NI and IC but as I am very close to a cliff edge as you call it, it does intrigue me.
The problem is it would create winners and losers. The obvious losers being pensioners (who don't pay NI) and thy are far more likely to resent the change than the winners are to be grateful.
Here's something I prepared earlier on NIC/IT consolidation:
1) Small impact on pensioners as most do not have incomes that are affected by top rates of income tax 2) People on top 10% income are the group hit most significantly 3) Middle/high incomes (deciles 5-9) do much better 4) Overall, over 50% of households better off 5) Great for in-work households with dependent children, particularly single parents 6) Significant drop in Universal Credit bill as tax burden is reduced for low/medium earners with children (again, a big chunk of this is single parents) 7) Increase in child poverty because median incomes increase while those with no earnings don't benefit (perverse effect of the relative poverty calculation)
However, don't think that flat percentage increase in income tax is sensible because it bumps lots of high earners into >50% marginal tax rates. You'd need to moderate it, so the effects described above would be watered down somewhat.
One reason that politicians will give you for having NI separate is so that the taxation*sounds* less. See the bit about income tax going over 50% when you merge in NI...
Well you wouldn't merge in Employer NI (because that requires ensuring everyone gets a 13.8% increase to cover the tax) so the increase would only be 2% from 40% to 42%...
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
I believe the right to buy is correct for tenants, the right to buy at a massive discount however is effectively the right to beggar councils long term and should be stopped by Rayner yesterday.
Yeah, some discount is fine as is the principle. Massive discounts and not building replacement stock is crazy.
Harris has run the best campaign she could and there was no way after Biden stepped aside that the Dems could pick a different candidate . She just needs Biden to stfu for the next week !
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
I note the response from @Nigelb to @moonshine this morning where moonshine makes out that 'both of which carry high risk for the safe passage of western civilisation' and Nigel points out that Harris is a mainstream Democrat. Republicans might not like her politics but they are no different to other Democrat presidential candidates from the recent past.
Some of you may wonder why I was on @moonshine's case yesterday. Well try this link:
@moonshine defended her link to a Musk post referencing this guy more than once even when challenged by me, @JosiasJessop, @viewcode. One of the defences was she didn't think it necessary to spend 30 seconds checking out the validity of what Musk was posting.
It is not as if this is a one off either. She has a track record.
I think not unreasonably when we see stuff like this we should call it out.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
As I mentioned yesterday, just under £10k of that is Personal Independence Payment, which is not means tested and would also be received by her if she had a £50k income.
So the number you are wanting to compare is more like £24k than £33k.
Well that raises another question...if she did earn £50k+ a year, should she receive £10k a PIP? What about £100k a year? That seems like an awful lot of money as a benefit and still be earning a high wage.
Now - that *is* an interesting question.
On a parallel question, should people on such incomes get tax breaks for childcare?
After all - children are a choice, whilst Rheumatoid Arthritis or Scleroderma are not a choice.
Who knew garbage would play such a big role in the last week of the campaign !
Biden shouldn’t have been doing a zoom call at exactly the same time as the Harris speech and I do think this will have harmed her campaign . Not in terms of losing votes of those already voting for her but It could help GOP turnout .
The Harris message of moving on from the division and trying to unite the country was hit by the Biden gaffe or apostrophe gate!
She needs to come out with something in response today , as to what that might be not sure yet !
This however does give her more license to break from Biden , those who were pissed off that he was dumped must surely realize now that he would have been a disaster if he had stayed on the ticket .
Something along these lines ?
Vice President Harris: Those who disagree with us are not ‘the enemy within,’ as Trump says. They are our fellow Americans. It is time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time for a new generation of leadership https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1851412514854019358
That’s all well and good but Biden trampled all over that . Even worse she didn’t even get a decent days positive coverage of what was a very good speech. People know Biden is gaffe prone but he’s a total liability and he needs to stay locked away in the WH .
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Because those houses don't currently exist so it would require the council / housing association to receive a lot of money to actually build those houses...
In other words, how long have we been kidding ourselves as a nation about our national wealth? Lawson has a fair bit to answer for in terms of confusing one-off receipts and recurring income.
Who knew garbage would play such a big role in the last week of the campaign !
Biden shouldn’t have been doing a zoom call at exactly the same time as the Harris speech and I do think this will have harmed her campaign . Not in terms of losing votes of those already voting for her but It could help GOP turnout .
The Harris message of moving on from the division and trying to unite the country was hit by the Biden gaffe or apostrophe gate!
She needs to come out with something in response today , as to what that might be not sure yet !
This however does give her more license to break from Biden , those who were pissed off that he was dumped must surely realize now that he would have been a disaster if he had stayed on the ticket .
Something along these lines ?
Vice President Harris: Those who disagree with us are not ‘the enemy within,’ as Trump says. They are our fellow Americans. It is time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time for a new generation of leadership https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1851412514854019358
That’s all well and good but Biden trampled all over that . Even worse she didn’t even get a decent days positive coverage of what was a very good speech. People know Biden is gaffe prone but he’s a total liability and he needs to stay locked away in the WH .
As I noted this morning. His political antennae, even a couple of years back, were far better than they are now.
If the Tories were delivering this budget I can guarantee all the people saying it is wrong for taxes to go up would be cheering this on.
Well we have examples from the recent past. When Sunak was introducing NI++ and putting NI up, those right leaning were most definitely not cheering. The reaction was WTF is he doing, absolute muppet.
So what would they do differently?
We have done this loads previously. The obvious things to do, you get rid of the cliff edges at £50-60k and £100-120k, you merge NI/ IC, if you do this the right way you get more tax from the top edge, you get rid of the current system that nudges people to work / earn less.
But my question would be, why did they not do this in the 14 years they were in government?
Because they bottled it, then Brexit, then COVID. Combining NI / IC is a big move. However, the cliff edges there were no excuses.
But your original post was right leaning people would be cheering previous government raising NI, they most certainly weren't.
The problem is that Labour will now just play the “you had 14 years and look what you did” card.
I don’t know much about combining NI and IC but as I am very close to a cliff edge as you call it, it does intrigue me.
The problem is it would create winners and losers. The obvious losers being pensioners (who don't pay NI) and thy are far more likely to resent the change than the winners are to be grateful.
Here's something I prepared earlier on NIC/IT consolidation:
1) Small impact on pensioners as most do not have incomes that are affected by top rates of income tax 2) People on top 10% income are the group hit most significantly 3) Middle/high incomes (deciles 5-9) do much better 4) Overall, over 50% of households better off 5) Great for in-work households with dependent children, particularly single parents 6) Significant drop in Universal Credit bill as tax burden is reduced for low/medium earners with children (again, a big chunk of this is single parents) 7) Increase in child poverty because median incomes increase while those with no earnings don't benefit (perverse effect of the relative poverty calculation)
However, don't think that flat percentage increase in income tax is sensible because it bumps lots of high earners into >50% marginal tax rates. You'd need to moderate it, so the effects described above would be watered down somewhat.
One reason that politicians will give you for having NI separate is so that the taxation*sounds* less. See the bit about income tax going over 50% when you merge in NI...
That's not the case now because employee NICs is regressive - you only pay 2% on earnings over £50,000. So the current system does keep most overall marginal rates below 50%.
My illustrative example was very simple - abolish NICs, flat percentage increase in all income tax rates. There's no way the Treasury would actually do that.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
PFI was the worst thing about New Labour. (Unusually fairly agnostic on the Iraq war stuff myself)
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Because those houses don't currently exist so it would require the council / housing association to receive a lot of money to actually build those houses...
In other words, how long have we been kidding ourselves as a nation about our national wealth? Lawson has a fair bit to answer for in terms of confusing one-off receipts and recurring income.
Since at least 2008 but this stems back to Maggie selling off council homes so we can easily get back to the 1980s...
If the Tories were delivering this budget I can guarantee all the people saying it is wrong for taxes to go up would be cheering this on.
Well we have examples from the recent past. When Sunak was introducing NI++ and putting NI up, those right leaning were most definitely not cheering. The reaction was WTF is he doing, absolute muppet.
So what would they do differently?
We have done this loads previously. The obvious things to do, you get rid of the cliff edges at £50-60k and £100-120k, you merge NI/ IC, if you do this the right way you get more tax from the top edge, you get rid of the current system that nudges people to work / earn less.
But my question would be, why did they not do this in the 14 years they were in government?
Because they bottled it, then Brexit, then COVID. Combining NI / IC is a big move. However, the cliff edges there were no excuses.
But your original post was right leaning people would be cheering previous government raising NI, they most certainly weren't.
The problem is that Labour will now just play the “you had 14 years and look what you did” card.
I don’t know much about combining NI and IC but as I am very close to a cliff edge as you call it, it does intrigue me.
The problem is it would create winners and losers. The obvious losers being pensioners (who don't pay NI) and thy are far more likely to resent the change than the winners are to be grateful.
Here's something I prepared earlier on NIC/IT consolidation:
1) Small impact on pensioners as most do not have incomes that are affected by top rates of income tax 2) People on top 10% income are the group hit most significantly 3) Middle/high incomes (deciles 5-9) do much better 4) Overall, over 50% of households better off 5) Great for in-work households with dependent children, particularly single parents 6) Significant drop in Universal Credit bill as tax burden is reduced for low/medium earners with children (again, a big chunk of this is single parents) 7) Increase in child poverty because median incomes increase while those with no earnings don't benefit (perverse effect of the relative poverty calculation)
However, don't think that flat percentage increase in income tax is sensible because it bumps lots of high earners into >50% marginal tax rates. You'd need to moderate it, so the effects described above would be watered down somewhat.
One reason that politicians will give you for having NI separate is so that the taxation*sounds* less. See the bit about income tax going over 50% when you merge in NI...
Well you wouldn't merge in Employer NI (because that requires ensuring everyone gets a 13.8% increase to cover the tax) so the increase would only be 2% from 40% to 42%...
Yes, I should face said this is only employee NICs. Employer NICs is much larger - £110 billion v £60 billion.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
At higher rents with (and this is just anecdotes) little maintenance because the landlords don't care and can't offered to do them.
For anyone wanting a numbers workout ahead of teh budget, More or Less is interesting.
Debunking claims about road safety of Old Drivers vs Young Drivers, and to my eye talking about prison overcrowding whilst entirely ignoring the nearly 20% of the prison population are on remand: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0024f2y
Understand thar it's Budget day, but not much comment so far on the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard fire. I find it to be a little concerning, as there're also been several fires at military-linked areas in Germany recently.
And at a Slovakian 155mm artillery munitions factory.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
If they do, they might not want to share on here to avoid the wrath of the board.
Really? I'd congratulate anyone who correctly called the US election and got a nice win from a Trump victory. I'd be horrified at the result, but betting should be head over heart. I'd have bet on the Orange One if I'd believed he had a good chance when the odds were appealing.
Not at all in the same league of horror, but I did quite nicely out of Con seat bands - higher than poll projections - and a couple of constituency bets (e.g. Sunak) at the GE even though I'm very far from a supporter of the last government.
I've been tipping him on and off since Jan 2021! Including at odds of around 10 early on and 4+ on the popular vote over the last year. At current odds would favour Harris, but think she is a better bet at 1.2ish after she has won the election rather than 2.8 today. I hope I am amongst his fiercest critics, if not I shall try harder.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
It's just the absolute worst thing for the country's finances really. Look at it from an accounting perspective.
Council owns a home worth £200K. Forced to sell for say £120k.
The lucky bod who bought it instantly has £80k of equity
But the nation's balance sheet has a net loss of £80k now. The property owner now rents it out for I dunno, £1k pcm. An implied 5% yield - possibly on the low side to a tenant that needs housing benefit. It's paid for by HB. In 10 years the council/state has lost the remaining £120k.
If it's kept as property of the council/state then the £1k housing benefit gets paid from one arm of Gov't (National) and is received by the council. And the council gets the general appreciation of property over time, say 25% in 10 years to be conservative.
The state & council is £250,000 worse off over 10 years. If you wanted to design policies to create a horrendous housing mess you wouldn't go far wrong with this lot.
OK so the burden of repairs and maintenance shifts away from the state but it's never going to match the quantum of income and equity forgone.
If you're betting on the GOP losing a Senate seat, this is probably the one.
I get why this has raised eyebrows, especially after McMullin, Orman, etc.
But let me just point out that Osborn is not only polling better than all of those guys, but is also polling better than Allred, DMP, and Tester, and the election is literally next week. https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851389367866310818
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
At higher rents with (and this is just anecdotes) little maintenance because the landlords don't care and can't offered to do them.
Probably a lot of anecdotes TBH.
There's data around in teh English Housing Survey for a number of years showing higher satisfaction in various respects in the PRS over the Social Sector. I'm not sure if there are specifics relating to repairs.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
The insane thing is that those contracts didn’t have to be like that.
I mean, the Victorians managed to use a form of PFI to smooth over the rebuilding of the RN at the end of the 19th century. And that didn’t mean that Vickers-Armstrong ended up owning the Admiral class battleships….
Though in the case of HMS Benbow, this might have been an advantage.
Understand thar it's Budget day, but not much comment so far on the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard fire. I find it to be a little concerning, as there're also been several fires at military-linked areas in Germany recently.
And at a Slovakian 155mm artillery munitions factory.
Yes
Not much coverage so far, but I find it to be a concern. I can see also that the only previous documented fire was a much smaller one, on a ship area.
The RBS website has denied me to log in to our current account for a couple of days now. I'm guessing that there's a lot of money shifting going on in advance of RR's big moment
The RBS website has denied me to log in to our current account for a couple of days now. I'm guessing that there's a lot of money shifting going on in advance of RR's big moment
There is zero chance you cannot login because of the pending budget. Zero.
If you have checked all the obvious* things, I'd call RBS if I were you.
(*Capslock, old or unsupported browser, cookies...)
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
At higher rents with (and this is just anecdotes) little maintenance because the landlords don't care and can't offered to do them.
Probably a lot of anecdotes TBH.
There's data around in teh English Housing Survey for a number of years showing higher satisfaction in various respects in the PRS over the Social Sector. I'm not sure if there are specifics relating to repairs.
Be interesting to drill down into that. There will be people in the private sector with plenty of money who are renting nice places for good reasons of not wanting to buy* and who are absolutely able to switch to a different property if the landlord is not on top of things. They should be pretty well satisfied.
*e.g. my wife and I rented for ~5 years when we first moved in together. We had fairly well paying but short term (contract research) jobs and preferred the flexibility of renting while also being able to save for a house deposit. We always felt in a strong position compared to landlords - we'd negotiate down rents, particularly renewals, knowing we had plenty of other options in our price range. We were always well satisfied with the properties we rented; if we had not been, we'd have moved to one where we were.
The RBS website has denied me to log in to our current account for a couple of days now. I'm guessing that there's a lot of money shifting going on in advance of RR's big moment
Call RBS. Mine is fine, and I've been moving my cash around in the last week or so.
For anyone wanting a numbers workout ahead of teh budget, More or Less is interesting.
Debunking claims about road safety of Old Drivers vs Young Drivers, and to my eye talking about prison overcrowding whilst entirely ignoring the nearly 20% of the prison population are on remand: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0024f2y
I'm offski. See you at the Kludget .. er Budget.
Another genius cost saving from the coalition/conservative govts, cutting court days...
Fascinating story on the Mayan city found with LiDAR. Wonder what else will be found once this tech really gets going on a mass scale.
Not so much the tech, I think (unless this is a new iteration, it's been well established for a long time) but people thinking to use existing scans, as in this case - or commission new ones - for this purpose.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
An explanation for governmental stupidity ?
Government simply doesn't think much beyond the next election. At most the one beyond that - then it's someone else's problem.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
At higher rents with (and this is just anecdotes) little maintenance because the landlords don't care and can't offered to do them.
Probably a lot of anecdotes TBH.
There's data around in teh English Housing Survey for a number of years showing higher satisfaction in various respects in the PRS over the Social Sector. I'm not sure if there are specifics relating to repairs.
Be interesting to drill down into that. There will be people in the private sector with plenty of money who are renting nice places for good reasons of not wanting to buy* and who are absolutely able to switch to a different property if the landlord is not on top of things. They should be pretty well satisfied.
*e.g. my wife and I rented for ~5 years when we first moved in together. We had fairly well paying but short term (contract research) jobs and preferred the flexibility of renting while also being able to save for a house deposit. We always felt in a strong position compared to landlords - we'd negotiate down rents, particularly renewals, knowing we had plenty of other options in our price range. We were always well satisfied with the properties we rented; if we had not been, we'd have moved to one where we were.
The demand for rental property nowadays probably makes that sort of negotiating impossible,
Understand thar it's Budget day, but not much comment so far on the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard fire. I find it to be a little concerning, as there're also been several fires at military-linked areas in Germany recently.
And at a Slovakian 155mm artillery munitions factory.
Yes
Not much coverage so far, but I find it to be a concern. I can see also that the only previous documented fire was a much smaller one, on a ship area.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
An explanation for governmental stupidity ?
Government simply doesn't think much beyond the next election. At most the one beyond that - then it's someone else's problem.
Perhaps we should be grateful that we didn't get 40 new hospitals under the Tories.
I'm very red on Trump. And getting steadily redder as I back Kamala at 2.82 on Betfair - which is a ridiculous price.
If the money available to Trump's campaign including PACs is say $1 billion then a few tens of million on distorting the betting markets makes sense to provide momentum and set up the "We Were Robbed" story. That's what I think is happening.
I'm not 100% certain Harris will win. Not even 70%. But I'm more than 35% certain that she will win, which is what is implied by her price of 2.82. The polls are on a knife edge; she has a better GOTV operation and is well ahead with women and graduates who have a higher propensity to vote.
I'm prepared to put my money where my head is on this one. I can live with the financial risk.
Yes, this is broadly my rationale for saying (with more confidence than you) that Harris will win.
The Trump campaign is a bullshit bubble. Inside the bubble all you hear, see and taste is bullshit. It MUST be true because it is all. Outside? Lets see how many of the soft Trumpers attracted to the bubble actually bother to vote. As the Corbyn Labour project discovered, its quite hard to convert non-voters to reliable voters.
The RBS website has denied me to log in to our current account for a couple of days now. I'm guessing that there's a lot of money shifting going on in advance of RR's big moment
There is zero chance you cannot login because of the pending budget. Zero.
If you have checked all the obvious* things, I'd call RBS if I were you.
(*Capslock, old or unsupported browser, cookies...)
Why do you say "zero chance"? It's easy to imagine their website is so inundated that it cannot cope with the volume. eta: I can get on with a mobile phone, but not on my Mac
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
I work in this area and this is categorically not the case with most PFI schemes.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
At higher rents with (and this is just anecdotes) little maintenance because the landlords don't care and can't offered to do them.
Probably a lot of anecdotes TBH.
There's data around in teh English Housing Survey for a number of years showing higher satisfaction in various respects in the PRS over the Social Sector. I'm not sure if there are specifics relating to repairs.
Be interesting to drill down into that. There will be people in the private sector with plenty of money who are renting nice places for good reasons of not wanting to buy* and who are absolutely able to switch to a different property if the landlord is not on top of things. They should be pretty well satisfied.
*e.g. my wife and I rented for ~5 years when we first moved in together. We had fairly well paying but short term (contract research) jobs and preferred the flexibility of renting while also being able to save for a house deposit. We always felt in a strong position compared to landlords - we'd negotiate down rents, particularly renewals, knowing we had plenty of other options in our price range. We were always well satisfied with the properties we rented; if we had not been, we'd have moved to one where we were.
The demand for rental property nowadays probably makes that sort of negotiating impossible,
"More than a fifth of rental properties are currently seeing a reduction in the advertised rental price before finding a tenant, compared with 16% last year"
Much harder than a decade ago for sure, and will depend on local market and mindset of landlord/estate agent but not particularly unusual either.
The RBS website has denied me to log in to our current account for a couple of days now. I'm guessing that there's a lot of money shifting going on in advance of RR's big moment
There is zero chance you cannot login because of the pending budget. Zero.
If you have checked all the obvious* things, I'd call RBS if I were you.
(*Capslock, old or unsupported browser, cookies...)
Why do you say "zero chance"? It's easy to imagine their website is so inundated that it cannot cope with the volume. eta: I can get on with a mobile phone, but not on my Mac
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
At higher rents with (and this is just anecdotes) little maintenance because the landlords don't care and can't offered to do them.
Probably a lot of anecdotes TBH.
There's data around in teh English Housing Survey for a number of years showing higher satisfaction in various respects in the PRS over the Social Sector. I'm not sure if there are specifics relating to repairs.
Be interesting to drill down into that. There will be people in the private sector with plenty of money who are renting nice places for good reasons of not wanting to buy* and who are absolutely able to switch to a different property if the landlord is not on top of things. They should be pretty well satisfied.
*e.g. my wife and I rented for ~5 years when we first moved in together. We had fairly well paying but short term (contract research) jobs and preferred the flexibility of renting while also being able to save for a house deposit. We always felt in a strong position compared to landlords - we'd negotiate down rents, particularly renewals, knowing we had plenty of other options in our price range. We were always well satisfied with the properties we rented; if we had not been, we'd have moved to one where we were.
The demand for rental property nowadays probably makes that sort of negotiating impossible,
On topic, the joy of politics is that the counterfactual can turn into the factual.
Truss was right.
We need economic growth and we need it consistently over a sustained period. We have cut and shrunk, shrunk and cut our economy over a long period, with the biggest contraction in the last decade when we were at our most vulnerable.
Truss was wrong in that she thought the way to growth was slash taxes and spending, but she also wanted investment. Borrowing to invest - and the delivering a return on that investment - is NOT bad economics. It is capitalism. And when the state borrows to invest in capacity, skills and infrastructure it has a long-term benefit.
At the same time, we need to cut the crap. We had dug ourselves into the ground when it comes to digging into the ground. We spend hundreds of millions on reports and surveys and impact assessments *without actually building anything*. The Tories gamed house planning so that the developers always beat the council. Not that the developers built what was needed. Do the same but *for the state*. We need to build this, it's going here, please accept this mitigation (or don't), start building. For housing we must have local people involved as its their communities being expanded, but the answer cannot just be "no".
Sadly I expect nothing from the Chancellor to drive growth, to drive investment, to try and course correct the UK so that we're comparable with France or Germany or Spain or the Netherlands or any of the rest of European nations who aren't as crushed by cuts as we are. Unless she pulls a massive rabbit out of the hat, Labour have already failed.
You're still assuming that every 'investment' generates a positive return.
That's not true in betting, that's not true in business and most of all its not true when government does it.
And yet if you look at successful economies internationally they invest a lot more than we do, typically including state investment.
We have a weird phobia of state investment here.
Perhaps other countries are better at the state investment than the land of nimbyism.
But if we want more state investment I suggest we build some more roads - actually one of the things this country can do pretty well.
There's quite a backlog of necessary infrastructure investment that I'm past arguing for investment in one thing over another. Britain needs to: Build Roads Build Heathrow runways three and four Build HS2, HS3, NPR and keep on electrifying the railways Build tidal power Build nuclear power Build renewables, pylons and storage Build EV chargers, lots of them Build houses, and towns Build tunnels and bridges Allow people to build factories And somehow keep on paying the bills until the economy grows in response.
Thats all needed but we also need to invest in people as risky and Gordon Brown like as that is. The justice system is probably the most obvious example for this. Austerity went too deep and lasted way too long and there is a price to be paid to get back on track.
I don't disagree, and yet. The deficit is already £80bn, so the decision has to be made that some things have to wait until after the investment has helped the economy to grow.
It's a really difficult situation, which is why I argued that Starmer and Labour should have been making this argument much earlier, ever since Truss in 2022 at least.
If they do anything close to what I think they need to do it will come as a huge shock to the voters. If fear of this shock causes them to shy away from what is necessary, then the country will remain mired in the same mess it has been sinking into for some time.
The RBS website has denied me to log in to our current account for a couple of days now. I'm guessing that there's a lot of money shifting going on in advance of RR's big moment
Call RBS. Mine is fine, and I've been moving my cash around in the last week or so.
I wouldn't waste my time trying to call them .. and have you ever used their "Cora" assistant - useless
I'm very red on Trump. And getting steadily redder as I back Kamala at 2.82 on Betfair - which is a ridiculous price.
If the money available to Trump's campaign including PACs is say $1 billion then a few tens of million on distorting the betting markets makes sense to provide momentum and set up the "We Were Robbed" story. That's what I think is happening.
I'm not 100% certain Harris will win. Not even 70%. But I'm more than 35% certain that she will win, which is what is implied by her price of 2.82. The polls are on a knife edge; she has a better GOTV operation and is well ahead with women and graduates who have a higher propensity to vote.
I'm prepared to put my money where my head is on this one. I can live with the financial risk.
Yes, this is broadly my rationale for saying (with more confidence than you) that Harris will win.
The Trump campaign is a bullshit bubble. Inside the bubble all you hear, see and taste is bullshit. It MUST be true because it is all. Outside? Lets see how many of the soft Trumpers attracted to the bubble actually bother to vote. As the Corbyn Labour project discovered, its quite hard to convert non-voters to reliable voters.
The biggest amount of smoke in this election is for sure the turn out of the Haley-voting never-trumpers. One assumes there’s internal polling on this but just looking at early returns by registration of party is pretty unhelpful. Is there some level of publicly available insight on this that I’ve missed?
On topic, the joy of politics is that the counterfactual can turn into the factual.
Truss was right.
We need economic growth and we need it consistently over a sustained period. We have cut and shrunk, shrunk and cut our economy over a long period, with the biggest contraction in the last decade when we were at our most vulnerable.
Truss was wrong in that she thought the way to growth was slash taxes and spending, but she also wanted investment. Borrowing to invest - and the delivering a return on that investment - is NOT bad economics. It is capitalism. And when the state borrows to invest in capacity, skills and infrastructure it has a long-term benefit.
At the same time, we need to cut the crap. We had dug ourselves into the ground when it comes to digging into the ground. We spend hundreds of millions on reports and surveys and impact assessments *without actually building anything*. The Tories gamed house planning so that the developers always beat the council. Not that the developers built what was needed. Do the same but *for the state*. We need to build this, it's going here, please accept this mitigation (or don't), start building. For housing we must have local people involved as its their communities being expanded, but the answer cannot just be "no".
Sadly I expect nothing from the Chancellor to drive growth, to drive investment, to try and course correct the UK so that we're comparable with France or Germany or Spain or the Netherlands or any of the rest of European nations who aren't as crushed by cuts as we are. Unless she pulls a massive rabbit out of the hat, Labour have already failed.
You're still assuming that every 'investment' generates a positive return.
That's not true in betting, that's not true in business and most of all its not true when government does it.
And yet if you look at successful economies internationally they invest a lot more than we do, typically including state investment.
We have a weird phobia of state investment here.
Perhaps other countries are better at the state investment than the land of nimbyism.
But if we want more state investment I suggest we build some more roads - actually one of the things this country can do pretty well.
There's quite a backlog of necessary infrastructure investment that I'm past arguing for investment in one thing over another. Britain needs to: Build Roads Build Heathrow runways three and four Build HS2, HS3, NPR and keep on electrifying the railways Build tidal power Build nuclear power Build renewables, pylons and storage Build EV chargers, lots of them Build houses, and towns Build tunnels and bridges Allow people to build factories And somehow keep on paying the bills until the economy grows in response.
Thats all needed but we also need to invest in people as risky and Gordon Brown like as that is. The justice system is probably the most obvious example for this. Austerity went too deep and lasted way too long and there is a price to be paid to get back on track.
I don't disagree, and yet. The deficit is already £80bn, so the decision has to be made that some things have to wait until after the investment has helped the economy to grow.
It's a really difficult situation, which is why I argued that Starmer and Labour should have been making this argument much earlier, ever since Truss in 2022 at least.
If they do anything close to what I think they need to do it will come as a huge shock to the voters. If fear of this shock causes them to shy away from what is necessary, then the country will remain mired in the same mess it has been sinking into for some time.
Yeah not long to find out. Suspect there will be more I dislike in the budget than like but hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
An explanation for governmental stupidity ?
Government simply doesn't think much beyond the next election. At most the one beyond that - then it's someone else's problem.
Perhaps we should be grateful that we didn't get 40 new hospitals under the Tories.
If they do, they might not want to share on here to avoid the wrath of the board.
Really? I'd congratulate anyone who correctly called the US election and got a nice win from a Trump victory. I'd be horrified at the result, but betting should be head over heart. I'd have bet on the Orange One if I'd believed he had a good chance when the odds were appealing.
Not at all in the same league of horror, but I did quite nicely out of Con seat bands - higher than poll projections - and a couple of constituency bets (e.g. Sunak) at the GE even though I'm very far from a supporter of the last government.
I've been tipping him on and off since Jan 2021! Including at odds of around 10 early on and 4+ on the popular vote over the last year. At current odds would favour Harris, but think she is a better bet at 1.2ish after she has won the election rather than 2.8 today. I hope I am amongst his fiercest critics, if not I shall try harder.
Nobody doubts your antipathy towards him. No problem there at all.
But yes, I've been struck by your bullishness on his chances for a long time. Opposite of me really. And the vibe (plus polls plus other little bits of data) is that you'll probably be proved correct. Hopefully got yourself a rock solid all green book off the back of it.
As for me, even if I end up right and he loses I'll have got it wrong because Trump is clearly competitive here. After his shambolic term in office, then his assault on democracy and the constitution after losing it, then the sort of hate fuelled campaign he's run, I really thought his vote would be capped at around 45% against any viable opponent (which Harris is).
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
I work in this area and this is categorically not the case with most PFI schemes.
@Eabhal This is what I get: "Service unavailable Digital Banking is temporarily unavailable. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause you. Please try again later."
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
That the PFI contract was probably given to some minister's relative.
The All Blacks have even more incentive for smashing England on Saturday.
England prop Joe Marler has deactivated his X account after posting that the haka "needs binning" before Saturday's match against New Zealand.
Marler, 34, will not feature in the Autumn Nations Series opener at Twickenham's Allianz Stadium after breaking his foot during the first Test against the All Blacks in July.
In rugby union, regulations prevent opposing teams crossing the halfway line while New Zealand are performing the Maori war dance.
"The haka needs binning. It's ridiculous," Marler posted on X.
I see we are getting the Chess fake news story again,
Rachel Reeves: Playing Labour's first big gambit
Reeves played chess from an early age, with her father teaching her the key moves. She became a national under-14 champion, and would "quietly thrash" any boys who might think they were in for an easy game, according to Ellie.
If the Tories were delivering this budget I can guarantee all the people saying it is wrong for taxes to go up would be cheering this on.
Well we have examples from the recent past. When Sunak was introducing NI++ and putting NI up, those right leaning were most definitely not cheering. The reaction was WTF is he doing, absolute muppet.
So what would they do differently?
We have done this loads previously. The obvious things to do, you get rid of the cliff edges at £50-60k and £100-120k, you merge NI/ IC, if you do this the right way you get more tax from the top edge, you get rid of the current system that nudges people to work / earn less.
But my question would be, why did they not do this in the 14 years they were in government?
Because they bottled it, then Brexit, then COVID. Combining NI / IC is a big move. However, the cliff edges there were no excuses.
But your original post was right leaning people would be cheering previous government raising NI, they most certainly weren't.
The problem is that Labour will now just play the “you had 14 years and look what you did” card.
I don’t know much about combining NI and IC but as I am very close to a cliff edge as you call it, it does intrigue me.
The problem is it would create winners and losers. The obvious losers being pensioners (who don't pay NI) and thy are far more likely to resent the change than the winners are to be grateful.
Here's something I prepared earlier on NIC/IT consolidation:
1) Small impact on pensioners as most do not have incomes that are affected by top rates of income tax 2) People on top 10% income are the group hit most significantly 3) Middle/high incomes (deciles 5-9) do much better 4) Overall, over 50% of households better off 5) Great for in-work households with dependent children, particularly single parents 6) Significant drop in Universal Credit bill as tax burden is reduced for low/medium earners with children (again, a big chunk of this is single parents) 7) Increase in child poverty because median incomes increase while those with no earnings don't benefit (perverse effect of the relative poverty calculation)
However, don't think that flat percentage increase in income tax is sensible because it bumps lots of high earners into >50% marginal tax rates. You'd need to moderate it, so the effects described above would be watered down somewhat.
This is a bit of a myth, it's actually the pensioners on £12k-£50k that would be hardest hit. (It's still the fair thing to do though.)
Combined ICT and NI rates are as follows (ignoring the personal allowance and CB cliff-edges for the moment):
For employees under 66 (State Retirement Age): Up to £12,570pa 0% £12,570 - £50,270 28% (20% ICT + 8% NI) £50,270 - £125,140 42% (40% ICT + 2% NI) >£125,140 47% (45% ICT + 2% NI)
For people over 66 and all those living off unearned income: Up to £12,570pa 0% £12,570 - £50,270 20% £50,270 - £125,140 40% >£125,140 45%
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
I work in this area and this is categorically not the case with most PFI schemes.
ARE YOU SAYING THAT OUR NIGEL HAS YET AGAIN SWALLOWED SOMETHING OFF THE INTERNET HOOK LINE AND SINKER AND IS NOW REPRESENTING IT ON PB AS FACT?
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
Anyone yelling about Labour corruption in the way they do about the Tories and the covid PPE.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
An explanation for governmental stupidity ?
Government simply doesn't think much beyond the next election. At most the one beyond that - then it's someone else's problem.
Perhaps we should be grateful that we didn't get 40 new hospitals under the Tories.
The All Blacks have even more incentive for smashing England on Saturday.
England prop Joe Marler has deactivated his X account after posting that the haka "needs binning" before Saturday's match against New Zealand.
Marler, 34, will not feature in the Autumn Nations Series opener at Twickenham's Allianz Stadium after breaking his foot during the first Test against the All Blacks in July.
In rugby union, regulations prevent opposing teams crossing the halfway line while New Zealand are performing the Maori war dance.
"The haka needs binning. It's ridiculous," Marler posted on X.
The All Blacks have even more incentive for smashing England on Saturday.
England prop Joe Marler has deactivated his X account after posting that the haka "needs binning" before Saturday's match against New Zealand.
Marler, 34, will not feature in the Autumn Nations Series opener at Twickenham's Allianz Stadium after breaking his foot during the first Test against the All Blacks in July.
In rugby union, regulations prevent opposing teams crossing the halfway line while New Zealand are performing the Maori war dance.
"The haka needs binning. It's ridiculous," Marler posted on X.
Marler is a very weird dude. The fact that him and serial penalty giver awayer Dan Cole, who are OAPs now, are still in the squad doesn't signal strength with English prop game.
Nobody has picked up on the reference to the film Se7en in the headline.
I was thinking it was more a reference to the classic CBeebies show (Apologies in advance for the shocking anti-Semitic trope revealed by the unboxing )
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
Anyone yelling about Labour corruption in the way they do about the Tories and the covid PPE.
Corruption or incompetence? I'd lean to the latter but either way New Labours biggest failing and happy to have a yell at them despite being a bit of a Blairite.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
So they are paid generously over thirty years, and then they get to keep the building at the end? What am I missing here?
An explanation for governmental stupidity ?
Government simply doesn't think much beyond the next election. At most the one beyond that - then it's someone else's problem.
Perhaps we should be grateful that we didn't get 40 new hospitals under the Tories.
I'm very red on Trump. And getting steadily redder as I back Kamala at 2.82 on Betfair - which is a ridiculous price.
If the money available to Trump's campaign including PACs is say $1 billion then a few tens of million on distorting the betting markets makes sense to provide momentum and set up the "We Were Robbed" story. That's what I think is happening.
I'm not 100% certain Harris will win. Not even 70%. But I'm more than 35% certain that she will win, which is what is implied by her price of 2.82. The polls are on a knife edge; she has a better GOTV operation and is well ahead with women and graduates who have a higher propensity to vote.
I'm prepared to put my money where my head is on this one. I can live with the financial risk.
I am struck by how much the lady on benefits gets. £33k a year. You would have to earn nearly £50k a year to take home that much, which is more than most of all the other people in that case study.
She doesn't get £33k a year. Her landlord gets £11k, her carers get £10k, she gets the rest from which she'll have to cover bills and any difference between rent+care and hb+pip
You can't separate out landlord like that. We pretty much all pay the landlord or the bank for housing....
What I don't understand is why people in her situation haven't been moved into local authority owned housing ASAP so the state isn't paying these ridiculous sums for rent and she has a much more stable landlord who won't increase the rent overnight etc...
Right to buy. Councils blocked from reinvesting.
And now 41% of Right to Buy homes are being rented out privately.
At higher rents with (and this is just anecdotes) little maintenance because the landlords don't care and can't offered to do them.
Probably a lot of anecdotes TBH.
There's data around in teh English Housing Survey for a number of years showing higher satisfaction in various respects in the PRS over the Social Sector. I'm not sure if there are specifics relating to repairs.
Be interesting to drill down into that. There will be people in the private sector with plenty of money who are renting nice places for good reasons of not wanting to buy* and who are absolutely able to switch to a different property if the landlord is not on top of things. They should be pretty well satisfied.
*e.g. my wife and I rented for ~5 years when we first moved in together. We had fairly well paying but short term (contract research) jobs and preferred the flexibility of renting while also being able to save for a house deposit. We always felt in a strong position compared to landlords - we'd negotiate down rents, particularly renewals, knowing we had plenty of other options in our price range. We were always well satisfied with the properties we rented; if we had not been, we'd have moved to one where we were.
It's also expectations management - one of the political reasons for shifting social housing to the private sector.
I expect to be ripped off and not have repairs dealt with in a timely manner when renting privately, and indeed in my last rental we did spend far too long without heating, or with a boiler that kept on waking us up. But we received all of our deposit back when we left, and they sort of forgot to increase the rent a couple of times, so overall my feeling is that it could have been worse.
If it was a social rental, however, I think I'd have been a lot less forbearing of the maintenance failures, because I would have been less worried about being evicted due to complaining. And, of course, the local councillors would have risked being dragged into it.
When I look at the vast majority of government reorganisations over my several decades, most of them look like a way to distance government for the responsibility for failure. And the result has been that when people are frustrated about things being crap, they feel there is no accountability, no-one to blame, and nothing they can do to make things better.
And they're right. And that's why we see the rage being funneled towards people on the extremes pledging to smash the system, drain the swamp, etc.
Comments
So I think the number you are wanting to compare is more like £24k than £33k.
(Update: plus the pre-tax / post tax as mentioned by @Pulpstar .
But the LHA will not be taxed either, I think.)
These are complex comparisons, as Frances Ryan in the Guardian keeps finding out when she gets not quite right.
Wiki: "This type of storm is also known as an isolated depression/anticyclone occurring at high altitude/troposphere (DANA in Spanish – depresión aislada en niveles altos[4])."
If I had not had my DVT (which was unrelated) then I would not have known I had an aneuryism and serious atrial fibulation
1) Small impact on pensioners as most do not have incomes that are affected by top rates of income tax
2) People on top 10% income are the group hit most significantly
3) Middle/high incomes (deciles 5-9) do much better
4) Overall, over 50% of households better off
5) Great for in-work households with dependent children, particularly single parents
6) Significant drop in Universal Credit bill as tax burden is reduced for low/medium earners with children (again, a big chunk of this is single parents)
7) Increase in child poverty because median incomes increase while those with no earnings don't benefit (perverse effect of the relative poverty calculation)
However, don't think that flat percentage increase in income tax is sensible because it bumps lots of high earners into >50% marginal tax rates. You'd need to moderate it, so the effects described above would be watered down somewhat.
Not at all in the same league of horror, but I did quite nicely out of Con seat bands - higher than poll projections - and a couple of constituency bets (e.g. Sunak) at the GE even though I'm very far from a supporter of the last government.
Vice President Harris: Those who disagree with us are not ‘the enemy within,’ as Trump says. They are our fellow Americans. It is time to stop pointing fingers and start locking arms. It is time for a new generation of leadership
https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1851412514854019358
The fix is a lot of social housing but that costs money and creates a whole set of different issues except for the fact we need to build a couple of millions houses ASAP to match our actual population.
Under the last Labour government, the local hospital (Victorian buildings) was sold off for housing development, and a replacement built, under a PFI contract.
The usual lock in on maintenance at silly prices, etc., for 30 years. And after 30 years, the hospital become the property of the PFI contract guys (or whichever foreign investor bought out the contract).
Some of you may wonder why I was on @moonshine's case yesterday. Well try this link:
https://x.com/TheRISEofROD
And here is just one typical link he has made:
https://x.com/RedPillSayian/status/1851331798480879852
His tweeter feed is full of this stuff.
@moonshine defended her link to a Musk post referencing this guy more than once even when challenged by me, @JosiasJessop, @viewcode. One of the defences was she didn't think it necessary to spend 30 seconds checking out the validity of what Musk was posting.
It is not as if this is a one off either. She has a track record.
I think not unreasonably when we see stuff like this we should call it out.
On a parallel question, should people on such incomes get tax breaks for childcare?
After all - children are a choice, whilst Rheumatoid Arthritis or Scleroderma are not a choice.
His political antennae, even a couple of years back, were far better than they are now.
My illustrative example was very simple - abolish NICs, flat percentage increase in all income tax rates. There's no way the Treasury would actually do that.
Debunking claims about road safety of Old Drivers vs Young Drivers, and to my eye talking about prison overcrowding whilst entirely ignoring the nearly 20% of the prison population are on remand:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0024f2y
I'm offski. See you at the Kludget .. er Budget.
Council owns a home worth £200K. Forced to sell for say £120k.
The lucky bod who bought it instantly has £80k of equity
But the nation's balance sheet has a net loss of £80k now. The property owner now rents it out for I dunno, £1k pcm. An implied 5% yield - possibly on the low side to a tenant that needs housing benefit. It's paid for by HB. In 10 years the council/state has lost the remaining £120k.
If it's kept as property of the council/state then the £1k housing benefit gets paid from one arm of Gov't (National) and is received by the council. And the council gets the general appreciation of property over time, say 25% in 10 years to be conservative.
The state & council is £250,000 worse off over 10 years. If you wanted to design policies to create a horrendous housing mess you wouldn't go far wrong with this lot.
OK so the burden of repairs and maintenance shifts away from the state but it's never going to match the quantum of income and equity forgone.
I get why this has raised eyebrows, especially after McMullin, Orman, etc.
But let me just point out that Osborn is not only polling better than all of those guys, but is also polling better than Allred, DMP, and Tester, and the election is literally next week.
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851389367866310818
There's data around in teh English Housing Survey for a number of years showing higher satisfaction in various respects in the PRS over the Social Sector. I'm not sure if there are specifics relating to repairs.
I mean, the Victorians managed to use a form of PFI to smooth over the rebuilding of the RN at the end of the 19th century. And that didn’t mean that Vickers-Armstrong ended up owning the Admiral class battleships….
Though in the case of HMS Benbow, this might have been an advantage.
She inspired Kipling - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ballads_and_Barrack-Room_Ballads/The_Ballad_of_the_'Clampherdown'
And led to the comment that the designers seemed to be trying to compensate for something (She carried only 2 guns - the largest available)
Not much coverage so far, but I find it to be a concern. I can see also that the only previous documented fire was a much smaller one, on a ship area.
If you have checked all the obvious* things, I'd call RBS if I were you.
(*Capslock, old or unsupported browser, cookies...)
*e.g. my wife and I rented for ~5 years when we first moved in together. We had fairly well paying but short term (contract research) jobs and preferred the flexibility of renting while also being able to save for a house deposit. We always felt in a strong position compared to landlords - we'd negotiate down rents, particularly renewals, knowing we had plenty of other options in our price range. We were always well satisfied with the properties we rented; if we had not been, we'd have moved to one where we were.
Government simply doesn't think much beyond the next election. At most the one beyond that - then it's someone else's problem.
The Trump campaign is a bullshit bubble. Inside the bubble all you hear, see and taste is bullshit. It MUST be true because it is all. Outside? Lets see how many of the soft Trumpers attracted to the bubble actually bother to vote. As the Corbyn Labour project discovered, its quite hard to convert non-voters to reliable voters.
eta: I can get on with a mobile phone, but not on my Mac
Its not impossible:
"More than a fifth of rental properties are currently seeing a reduction in the advertised rental price before finding a tenant, compared with 16% last year"
Much harder than a decade ago for sure, and will depend on local market and mindset of landlord/estate agent but not particularly unusual either.
It's a really difficult situation, which is why I argued that Starmer and Labour should have been making this argument much earlier, ever since Truss in 2022 at least.
If they do anything close to what I think they need to do it will come as a huge shock to the voters. If fear of this shock causes them to shy away from what is necessary, then the country will remain mired in the same mess it has been sinking into for some time.
But yes, I've been struck by your bullishness on his chances for a long time. Opposite of me really. And the vibe (plus polls plus other little bits of data) is that you'll probably be proved correct. Hopefully got yourself a rock solid all green book off the back of it.
As for me, even if I end up right and he loses I'll have got it wrong because Trump is clearly competitive here. After his shambolic term in office, then his assault on democracy and the constitution after losing it, then the sort of hate fuelled campaign he's run, I really thought his vote would be capped at around 45% against any viable opponent (which Harris is).
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It's been going on for two days
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/23/guardian-angel-mega-fan-perform-worlds-largest-elvis-festival
The All Blacks have even more incentive for smashing England on Saturday.
England prop Joe Marler has deactivated his X account after posting that the haka "needs binning" before Saturday's match against New Zealand.
Marler, 34, will not feature in the Autumn Nations Series opener at Twickenham's Allianz Stadium after breaking his foot during the first Test against the All Blacks in July.
In rugby union, regulations prevent opposing teams crossing the halfway line while New Zealand are performing the Maori war dance.
"The haka needs binning. It's ridiculous," Marler posted on X.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/articles/c629qx5e6plo
#DaveWasRightAsAlwaysTooManyTweets
Rachel Reeves: Playing Labour's first big gambit
Reeves played chess from an early age, with her father teaching her the key moves. She became a national under-14 champion, and would "quietly thrash" any boys who might think they were in for an easy game, according to Ellie.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw4ywl7w820o
Combined ICT and NI rates are as follows (ignoring the personal allowance and CB cliff-edges for the moment):
For employees under 66 (State Retirement Age):
Up to £12,570pa 0%
£12,570 - £50,270 28% (20% ICT + 8% NI)
£50,270 - £125,140 42% (40% ICT + 2% NI)
>£125,140 47% (45% ICT + 2% NI)
For people over 66 and all those living off unearned income:
Up to £12,570pa 0%
£12,570 - £50,270 20%
£50,270 - £125,140 40%
>£125,140 45%
I don't believe it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/columnists/john-walsh/john-walsh-tales-of-the-city-5329604.html
(Apologies in advance for the shocking anti-Semitic trope revealed by the unboxing
It was also, partly, a deliberate warning to various parties, trying to hide installations underground. We can see you.
Bit like the time they waited until a Soviet sat was in the right place, before landing the test warheads from a Trident launch. In a smiley.
The next big thing will be cheap, ultra low LEO radar. There’s some already, but the next thing will be detailed, worldwide coverage…
We brothers, we happy band of brothers.
I expect to be ripped off and not have repairs dealt with in a timely manner when renting privately, and indeed in my last rental we did spend far too long without heating, or with a boiler that kept on waking us up. But we received all of our deposit back when we left, and they sort of forgot to increase the rent a couple of times, so overall my feeling is that it could have been worse.
If it was a social rental, however, I think I'd have been a lot less forbearing of the maintenance failures, because I would have been less worried about being evicted due to complaining. And, of course, the local councillors would have risked being dragged into it.
When I look at the vast majority of government reorganisations over my several decades, most of them look like a way to distance government for the responsibility for failure. And the result has been that when people are frustrated about things being crap, they feel there is no accountability, no-one to blame, and nothing they can do to make things better.
And they're right. And that's why we see the rage being funneled towards people on the extremes pledging to smash the system, drain the swamp, etc.