WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I would imagine there's scope for AI specific to legal proceedings and argumentation to substitute for several layers of bureaucracy, speed things up and improve output
I can't think of any recent examples where software led to a widespread miscarriage of justice.
Huh? The horizon scandal doesn’t mean we should completely abandon using software. Rather, we should not blindly accept its output in a court of law.
Would you trust the implementation of AI in various legal proceedings/administration to go better, given how people are inclined to trust software? We don't really learn lessons.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
I don't know about other schemes but NHS superannuation annuation recently had its liabilities substantially reduced in an actuarial analysis. Mostly this was due to improved annuity rates.
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
I don't know about other schemes but NHS superannuation annuation recently had its liabilities substantially reduced in an actuarial analysis. Mostly this was due to improved annuity rates.
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
Yes many (most?) public sector workers are due a contributions cut because of that calculation. But Gvt sat on it to examine what McCloud meant in full.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
Sure: but the funds own assets. They might be ultimately underwritten by the government, but they still own billions of pounds of shares and bonds. So you can't simply look at the liability line on its own. (Which is what the article posted by @Pagan2 did.)
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
I don't know about other schemes but NHS superannuation annuation recently had its liabilities substantially reduced in an actuarial analysis. Mostly this was due to improved annuity rates.
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
Yes many (most?) public sector workers are due a contributions cut because of that calculation. But Gvt sat on it to examine what McCloud meant in full.
I think that is the Universities Scheme.
There is no plan to reduce contribution rates for NHS Superannuation as far as I know.
£4.31 billion Net income from the NHS scheme for the exchequer this year is quite useful for Ms Reeves.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
Sure: but the funds own assets. They might be ultimately underwritten by the government, but they still own billions of pounds of shares and bonds. So you can't simply look at the liability line on its own. (Which is what the article posted by @Pagan2 did.)
Oh I see, yes. One thing I would do is remove the management of any of this from LAs, many of which have made really odd decisions over the years.
Edit - but then that applies to most LAs, like my local county council which started taking a knife to vital services whilst protecting a stupidly big reserve and continuing to own a mine and bags of farm land.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
Yes, I am in the Strathclyde local government scheme and last time I looked assets were 140% of liabilities.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
I don't know about other schemes but NHS superannuation annuation recently had its liabilities substantially reduced in an actuarial analysis. Mostly this was due to improved annuity rates.
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
Yes many (most?) public sector workers are due a contributions cut because of that calculation. But Gvt sat on it to examine what McCloud meant in full.
I think that is the Universities Scheme.
There is no plan to reduce contribution rates for NHS Superannuation as far as I know.
£4.31 billion Net income from the NHS scheme for the exchequer this year is quite useful for Ms Reeves.
You won’t get it, but I think you should be due one according to the calculations (that’s the civil service position and I am reading across so might be wrong).
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
Lovely country. A bit dry at the moment, but rain seems to be on its way.
Load shedding ridiculous at the moment, about 20 hours a day. So the rain is absolutely needed as the leccy still mostly comes from Kariba.
Of course that is a misleading figure for how much it affects life, when one is set up for it. You can be driving down a dirt track 50km from the nearest paved road these days and half the (basically) mud huts have solar. And there's starlink now too!
(It needs sorting of course. But third world is where we really see the solar revolution. And also, I have to say, despite what evangalists say don't generally see the cryptocurrency revolution... just more scams)
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
Tax (rich) pensioners.
This is the problem, sadly. Our total inability to deal with the dissonance between a social system that was set up to service the needs of a population that died in their late sixties or early seventies, vs their late eighties or nineties as they do now.
The sums do not add up. The nettle has to be grasped.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Its simply not true. Public spending went past £1trn for the first time in 2020/1. In 2024/5, before today, it was forecast to be £1.2trn. That is a 20% increase in 4 years. It was at record levels as a share of our GDP since WW2 and is now going higher. Whilst it is true that many front line services have been starved the cost of our administration has continued to rise. We simply cannot go on this way without massive increases in our productivity. I have seen nothing in today's budget that is likely to boost that.
How would you improve productivity within the Scottish legal system?
I would imagine there's scope for AI specific to legal proceedings and argumentation to substitute for several layers of bureaucracy, speed things up and improve output
I can't think of any recent examples where software led to a widespread miscarriage of justice.
Huh? The horizon scandal doesn’t mean we should completely abandon using software. Rather, we should not blindly accept its output in a court of law.
Would you trust the implementation of AI in various legal proceedings/administration to go better, given how people are inclined to trust software? We don't really learn lessons.
For a $work_thing, I've been testing out how well LLM/AI's fare when presented with out-of-context-yet-critical information when given a decision to make. And broadly, it's not good. The only one which has passed any sort of test is Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 3.5 (the new one, not the original 3.5).
Google's "Gemini" model was especially bad. As a basic test I gave it two potential job candidates to assess. Both had varying skills, male/female, soft/hard skills, etc. Except one of them had been shot and killed the night before.
Sometimes it would pick that up. But only in terms of affecting how soon they could start. Even though it would comment that the candidate was 'intelligible', then go on to lecture you on how you should only compare skills as that was unbiased.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
I don't know about other schemes but NHS superannuation annuation recently had its liabilities substantially reduced in an actuarial analysis. Mostly this was due to improved annuity rates.
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
Yes many (most?) public sector workers are due a contributions cut because of that calculation. But Gvt sat on it to examine what McCloud meant in full.
I think that is the Universities Scheme.
There is no plan to reduce contribution rates for NHS Superannuation as far as I know.
£4.31 billion Net income from the NHS scheme for the exchequer this year is quite useful for Ms Reeves.
You won’t get it, but I think you should be due one according to the calculations (that’s the civil service position and I am reading across so might be wrong).
I think the Mcloud issue needs settling first.
When mine goes through I will be due a 5 figure tax rebate according to my accountant as will need to recalculate the annual allowances for the tax years 2016-21. This is due to the way our 1995 scheme and 2015 scheme calculate the AA, but after McCloud only 1995 scheme applies to the AA.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
Agree. Not sure why the Opex budget has been fixed for multiple years, but Capex is one year only. Future Capex years are due to be agreed by spring 2025.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
I agree.
The rise in minimum wage and in Employer NI is going to have a big impact on the sector too. Charges for SC will have to go up.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
Tax (rich) pensioners.
This is the problem, sadly. Our total inability to deal with the dissonance between a social system that was set up to service the needs of a population that died in their late sixties or early seventies, vs their late eighties or nineties as they do now.
The sums do not add up. The nettle has to be grasped.
Or they could just tell the NHS that it will have to operate with a £18bin increase while social care gets £4bn.
I suspect a lot of this is to do with optics of ministers cutting ribbons outside whizzy new buildings that house the latest proton-whatsit scanner costing millions whereas no one gives a monkeys that care workers only get 15mins to take someone to the toilet, change their bedding, make a cup of tea and somehow also talk to the caree.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
I agree.
The rise in minimum wage and in Employer NI is going to have a big impact on the sector too. Charges for SC will have to go up.
Let's hope the councils get the additional money to cover the NI issue otherwise - more cuts.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
You think government should take vast chunks of tax payer’s money and invest it to get returns to cover current spending?
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
You think government should take vast chunks of tax payer’s money and invest it to get returns to cover current spending?
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
You think government should take vast chunks of tax payer’s money and invest it to get returns to cover current spending?
Surely it just gets given to fund managers?
Yes, but my objection would to tying up hundreds (if not thousands) of billions of tax payer’s cash to cover future spending when Government doesn’t need to.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
You think government should take vast chunks of tax payer’s money and invest it to get returns to cover current spending?
It's not vast chunks of taxpayer money. NHS workers and teachers, for example, pay pension contributions but it just disappears into the ether and then needs to be paid 40 year's later.
Having a funded scheme would require governments to balance current spending and expenditure throughout (exc. borrowing) and not encourage them into creating huge off balance sheet liabilities for future generations of taxpayers to deal with.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
The implicit assumption there is that in the long term, asset growth is higher than HMG borrowing. So what’s to stop the CHX borrowing an additional £100bn and investing it in equities and making a tidy profit? (Ignoring pensions completely)
Chips, green technology, plus the Trump bribes to the military-technology sector.
But that's not what Labour has proposed they've just spunked £22bn on "day to day spending for the NHS" so we're not going to get any kind of productivity gains are we? Where's our £20bn CHIPs act, where's our £10bn nuclear energy fund for 3rd and 4th gen reactor designs and a further £10bn for fusion energy commercialisation (an area we have a globally relevant industry in already), where's the £25bn fund for electrification of car manufacturing. No instead we're pissing £21bn on pie in the sky carbon capture and an unknown but massive amount on green (realistically blue) hydrogen.
If the US shows us what targeted investment can do, Labour have chosen to do the opposite.
Some of the blame for that surely has to go to Sunak and the Tory electoral machine, for causing the government to either abandon, or postpone, the 24 billion Green Growth plan, as I've mentioned, earlier this year.
Overall I don't think this year's is a bad budget, but as also said earlier on, if in the long-term this is not just a postponement, that will be a mistake.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
The implicit assumption there is that in the long term, asset growth is higher than HMG borrowing. So what’s to stop the CHX borrowing an additional £100bn and investing it in equities and making a tidy profit? (Ignoring pensions completely)
I mean the bolded bit is empirically true looking back historically over pretty much any period (temporary dips in crises notwithstanding). You would expect it to be true in the future too, though there's no guarantee.
If we had government debt at 40% of GDP I'd suggest it was a good idea. At 100%, we're approaching the limit of what markers will lend to us, so I'd be more cautious.
But the principle of this is why borrowing to invest (as per the budget today) is economically sound in a way that borrowing for current spending isn't: it is possible to make a positive net return from it. But it does rely on the investments not being a basket case.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
Tax (rich) pensioners.
This is the problem, sadly. Our total inability to deal with the dissonance between a social system that was set up to service the needs of a population that died in their late sixties or early seventies, vs their late eighties or nineties as they do now.
The sums do not add up. The nettle has to be grasped.
Or they could just tell the NHS that it will have to operate with a £18bin increase while social care gets £4bn.
I suspect a lot of this is to do with optics of ministers cutting ribbons outside whizzy new buildings that house the latest proton-whatsit scanner costing millions whereas no one gives a monkeys that care workers only get 15mins to take someone to the toilet, change their bedding, make a cup of tea and somehow also talk to the caree.
It's assuredly more that while the needs of the NHS are immediate, whereas the care sector problems are longer term and more complex. I say this as someone who helps care for a parent while working mainly from home. Obviously many are not in that position.
But of course the tendency is to fund the service that deals with someone who's fallen over and broken a hip or had a stroke rather than the one that might stop some of those incidents happening and save you money.
To use an analogy, we've been a bit like Man United at the moment, in terms of being caught between trying to keep up a level fans/patients expect at the expense of neglecting the underlying issues.
I don't think that is stupidity, waste, or venality though. It's human nature. We want to alleviate immediate pain and pay the cost over the lower cost of possibly preventing it ever happening. You need some bravery to do it. Thankfully, Streeting seems to have some - though whether enough is a real question.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
Tax (rich) pensioners.
This is the problem, sadly. Our total inability to deal with the dissonance between a social system that was set up to service the needs of a population that died in their late sixties or early seventies, vs their late eighties or nineties as they do now.
The sums do not add up. The nettle has to be grasped.
Or they could just tell the NHS that it will have to operate with a £18bin increase while social care gets £4bn.
I suspect a lot of this is to do with optics of ministers cutting ribbons outside whizzy new buildings that house the latest proton-whatsit scanner costing millions whereas no one gives a monkeys that care workers only get 15mins to take someone to the toilet, change their bedding, make a cup of tea and somehow also talk to the caree.
It's assuredly more that while the needs of the NHS are immediate, whereas the care sector problems are longer term and more complex. I say this as someone who helps care for a parent while working mainly from home. Obviously many are not in that position.
But of course the tendency is to fund the service that deals with someone who's fallen over and broken a hip or had a stroke rather than the one that might stop some of those incidents happening and save you money.
To use an analogy, we've been a bit like Man United at the moment, in terms of being caught between trying to keep up a level fans/patients expect at the expense of neglecting the underlying issues.
I don't think that is stupidity, waste, or venality though. It's human nature. We want to alleviate immediate pain and pay the cost over the lower cost of possibly preventing it ever happening. You need some bravery to do it. Thankfully, Streeting seems to have some - though whether enough is a real question.
I would like to see how much euthansia would save us too. No one seems to answer this question because it's a bit distatesteful, but those of us who are in favour of it for moral reasons (which is most of the population - FFS MPs please get on with this!) would I think see it as a bonus. It may not be that much as it's probably mostly going to used at what's currently the "bung them semi conscious with opioids but this totally isn't euthanasia cause it also kills their pain" stage but it surely will help a bit.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
It is worth noting that *some* public sector pension liabilities are properly funded.
No, that’s a fiction. You’re talking about local authorities and teachers for the most part. Notionally there’s a fund, but it’s underwritten, not required, and can’t go bust. It’s like the public works loan board: a bit of a polite fiction.
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
If they were funded from the start they could have been invested in equities and other assets returning more than government borrowing. Pension payments can then be paid out of the pot of assets and no need to be a drag on current expenditure as the proportion of pensioners increase. Local government pension schemes do this.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
You think government should take vast chunks of tax payer’s money and invest it to get returns to cover current spending?
Surely it just gets given to fund managers?
It does indeed: I managed some of the TFL pension in the past.
Edit to add: we and the other equity fund manager did so well, that they took the money away from us and put it in bonds because they were no longer in deficit.
The Dems biggest problem in 2016 was complacency and they won't have that problem this time, which makes me think Harris will probably win.
The Dems didn't have complacency in 2020 but they did have Covid which prevented them unrolling their ground game. This is arguably the first time in three elections we will see the Dems fully on the top of their election-winning game.
We get to see what Leigh-Mallory's Big Wing can finally do.
The budget ultimately is a bit meh. No great growth agenda. Official OBR projection is for ongoing stagnation.
No attempts to grasp nettle on triple lock, or council tax, or social care, or pensioner’s NI, or income tax cliff edges.
It’s a solid “C”, which is better than what we’ve seen for a while, but it’s not very good either.
It really isn't a C. This is pretty much the first election since 2020 where the Government has had the freedom to set out its stall, not impacted by all its options being boxed in by all its cash going to pay for Covid or to assist folk meet their energy bills in a cost of living crisis.
The absence of any broader vision of what might be achievable by a new government with a monster majority pushes it to - at best - a D.
One penny off a pint of beer was really taking the piss
I'm glad it didn't go up, even though I don't often drink in pubs, but one penny off?
What's the fucking point?
while it is a token decrease, the interesting bit is that duty went up for non-draught beer, so there will be an increasing tax diferrential in favour of draught, and hence pubs over supermarkets.
Oh I missed that. How fabulous. That's exactly the policy direction I've been calling for over many years.
it needs to go a lot further. I would prefer higher tax on offsales, with corresponding cuts to on-sales, so people find pubs and bars better places to drink. More sociable too.
You want to tax me hard, don't you?
Should I just bend over while you get a huge payrise?
No he obviously has a preference for his local pub to stay open so we must all be forced to drink his way I suspect
Most 'local pub champions' use it once a year for an hour Christmas Day lunchtime and expect to be greeted like conquering heroes on entering.
Frankly I would be happy to never enter a bar again...they are generally full of boring people with body odour that want to talk about nothing but football or cricket, assuming you can even talk over the volume of the music. Then at some point in the evening someone will turn into an arsehole and cause a scene....yeah no thanks
I really dislike pubs. I can just about take a beer garden providing they're not too busy. Somewhere in my imagination there is an idyllic pub, where people speak softly to a friend and mind their own business. Possibly even a warm fire and some decent scran if needed.
I have an especial dislike for the newer blokey "gastro-pub but we're not really a gastro-pub because that sounds non-blokey" places. Craving their Michelin Star so they can really ramp the prices up and keep the riff-raff out.
Pubs differ massively. Our local (nicknamed the 'Asbo Arms') is cr@p. But there are so many different types and ambiances that I can't imagine someone not liking any of them.
I find gastropubs (there are a couple of good ones around here) great for food, but not for general drinking. A small pub in a nearby village is great for snuggling in the corner with a pint and a paper or a magazine, and just reading. Another makes you feel welcome the moment you enter the door.
I have so many fond memories of pubs. When I was walking Glyndwr's Way in mid-Wales, I stopped off mid-afternoon at a pub in a tiny village called Llangunllo, just wanting my water bottle filled before I camped out on the tops. The landlord was an ancient man in his nineties being visited by a nurse, and he told me just I could pull my own pint if I wanted.
The next day I descended from my camping spot into the next valley into a village, and I again wanted my water bottle filled. I nipped into the post office, whose owner turned out to be a relative of the pub landlord from the previous day, and she gave me a cup of tea and some cake! People would walk into the post office and take goods, the owner writing the purchases down in a little book for later settlement.
I have so many pleasant stories about pubs... and a handful of not-nice ones as well. But generally a small country pub can be a heavenly place.
I find pubs are as pleasant as you let them be.
On a break from painting a flat for charity, went into one of those estate pubs built into the fabric of a very Brutalist block. The kind of place they depict in crappy gangster films on Netflix.
The pint of Oliver’s Island was perfectly poured and in a clean glass.
Shame you got a chair broken over your head before you could drink it....
2 trillion times a trillion times a trillion roubles.
Or by next year, enough to buy a loaf in Moscow.
The fine is also still growing due to non-payment and, if not paid within nine months, will start to double every day, reported state news agency Tass.
2 trillion times a trillion times a trillion roubles.
Or by next year, enough to buy a loaf in Moscow.
The fine is also still growing due to non-payment and, if not paid within nine months, will start to double every day, reported state news agency Tass.
For shitz n gigglez, they are aiming for the fine to become 10 to the 100th power.
Well done to whoever organised that so quickly! Once again, the entire news cycle is drowned out by a stunt.
Not sure it's that smart. His base will lap it up.
Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in swing states? Not so much...
There’s been plenty of interviews with Puerto Ricans who say that a. It was a comedian telling a joke, and b. There is indeed an almighty garbage problem on their island.
Meanwhile, the actual sitting president goes for a repeat of Hillary’s “Deplorables” moment from eight years ago.
One does have to wonder how much it’s in absolutely everyone’s interest to keep a 50/50 knife-edge election running until the very last moment.
It suit the politicians, the pollsters, the media, none of whom can be proven wrong if it really was a coin toss after all.
The problem will come if it ends up with a landslide one way or the other.
I genuinely think the polling is geared to bread and circuses, superficial appeasement of the masses to engage them in the tension of a knife-edge outcome. If one is 10% or more ahead, that wouldn't work, but in a US so polarised - partly by this process - they can get away with making politics a cliff-hanger entertainment.
Even more so when one of the players is pure "entertainment".*
*Damning of the US when their "entertainment" includes racism, misogyny, sexual assault and most of the cruder elements of life.
I wonder how they looked up what "undecillion" meant? This may be the first recorded instance of somebody using "Bing".
That just means that the Western sanctions on Russia are never going to get lifted, at least not until there’s a billion-fold depreciation of the rouble. How are Google supposed to pay the fine anyway, given that the SWIFT system doesn’t work in Russia?
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
One does have to wonder how much it’s in absolutely everyone’s interest to keep a 50/50 knife-edge election running until the very last moment.
It suit the politicians, the pollsters, the media, none of whom can be proven wrong if it really was a coin toss after all.
The problem will come if it ends up with a landslide one way or the other.
I genuinely think the polling is geared to bread and circuses, superficial appeasement of the masses to engage them in the tension of a knife-edge outcome. If one is 10% or more ahead, that wouldn't work, but in a US so polarised - partly by this process - they can get away with making politics a cliff-hanger entertainment.
Even more so when one of the players is pure "entertainment".*
*Damning of the US when their "entertainment" includes racism, misogyny, sexual assault and most of the cruder elements of life.
It’s true about one being pure “entertainment” but I noticed something the last couple of mornings listening to his ramblings. He seems to have two modes which I can see are appealing to the masses.
He has his old school American Preacher act. His speech pattern, cadence, tone everything is as if he is building them up and going to ask them to raise their hands and praise the Lord and drive out the devil. If it wasn’t so important it would be fascinating to listen to more.
The second mode is Circus Ringmaster where he is rousing the crowd from the centre of the tent. I was listening again this morning and he delivers the “Make America Powerful/Wealthy/Great Again” lines brilliantly, powerfully. He gets the crowd going, he’s punchy.
I really want him to lose as I think that dull predictability with Harris is better for the world than chaotic instability with Trump but I can see why, apart from what he says, how he speaks to the people attracts the average Joe.
Sensible idea. After Wednesday Twitter is going to be totally mad for potentially a couple of weeks, mostly filled with people screaming at each other with accusations of fraud and manipulation - because every election since 2000 has been the same.
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Criticisms of Biden over this from Trump supporters seem a little odd, given the way the GOP has tried to stop Ukraine getting help at every turn. How many Ukrainians died because of the six month long shell drought they suffered because some in the GOP wanted to help Russia?
Especially as Trump will do far, far worse than Biden. He will sell Ukraine down the river.
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Certainly Ukraine is going to need Europe to support if Trump is elected.
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Certainly Ukraine is going to need Europe to support if Trump is elected.
Well this particular criticism is of an almost total lack of support from Biden and Harris, nothing to do with Trump.
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Criticisms of Biden over this from Trump supporters seem a little odd, given the way the GOP has tried to stop Ukraine getting help at every turn. How many Ukrainians died because of the six month long shell drought they suffered because some in the GOP wanted to help Russia?
Especially as Trump will do far, far worse than Biden. He will sell Ukraine down the river.
Shame on anyone who supports or shills for Trump.
You just aren’t listening are you. Take off your blinkers. This has nothing to do with Trump. The fix is in.
Sensible idea. After Wednesday Twitter is going to be totally mad for potentially a couple of weeks, mostly filled with people screaming at each other with accusations of fraud and manipulation - because every election since 2000 has been the same.
The same, apart from one where the losing candidate didn't concede and instead led a violent coup attempt that failed. All quite similar really.
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Criticisms of Biden over this from Trump supporters seem a little odd, given the way the GOP has tried to stop Ukraine getting help at every turn. How many Ukrainians died because of the six month long shell drought they suffered because some in the GOP wanted to help Russia?
Especially as Trump will do far, far worse than Biden. He will sell Ukraine down the river.
Shame on anyone who supports or shills for Trump.
You just aren’t listening are you. Take off your blinkers. This has nothing to do with Trump. The fix is in.
Go on. 'Educate' us. What is this 'fix' that you are so certain about?
As I said, shame on anyone who supports or shills for Trump. Even conspiraloons.
Zelensky on North Korean soldiers entering the war. “The west is in denial… they are silent…”. Refers to their “escalation fears”. “I do not know how many soldiers from North Korea or Iran may come”.
Something has changes in recent months with western policy in Ukraine. I don’t think it relates to the UK election. More likely it’s the changed balance of power in Washington since Biden announced his withdrawal. But who knows.
Sensible idea. After Wednesday Twitter is going to be totally mad for potentially a couple of weeks, mostly filled with people screaming at each other with accusations of fraud and manipulation - because every election since 2000 has been the same.
The same, apart from one where the losing candidate didn't concede and instead led a violent coup attempt that failed. All quite similar really.
You can call it a coup as many times as you wish, but it's not going to become true.
Sensible idea. After Wednesday Twitter is going to be totally mad for potentially a couple of weeks, mostly filled with people screaming at each other with accusations of fraud and manipulation - because every election since 2000 has been the same.
The same, apart from one where the losing candidate didn't concede and instead led a violent coup attempt that failed. All quite similar really.
Yeah, but Sandpit would find a way to blame that coup attempt on Biden and the Dems...
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Criticisms of Biden over this from Trump supporters seem a little odd, given the way the GOP has tried to stop Ukraine getting help at every turn. How many Ukrainians died because of the six month long shell drought they suffered because some in the GOP wanted to help Russia?
Especially as Trump will do far, far worse than Biden. He will sell Ukraine down the river.
Shame on anyone who supports or shills for Trump.
You just aren’t listening are you. Take off your blinkers. This has nothing to do with Trump. The fix is in.
Go on. 'Educate' us. What is this 'fix' that you are so certain about?
As I said, shame on anyone who supports or shills for Trump. Even conspiraloons.
Why do you think I am shilling for Trump? I am merely quoting the furious words of Zelensky from yesterday. He knows that his cause is being abandoned regardless of who wins the election. Be angry with them, not the messenger.
Sensible idea. After Wednesday Twitter is going to be totally mad for potentially a couple of weeks, mostly filled with people screaming at each other with accusations of fraud and manipulation - because every election since 2000 has been the same.
The same, apart from one where the losing candidate didn't concede and instead led a violent coup attempt that failed. All quite similar really.
Yeah, but Sandpit would find a way to blame that coup attempt on Biden and the Dems...
Probably get some whataboutery comparing Clinton saying not my President a few times, to Trump refusing to ever concede, creating fake electors, asking counters to find 10,000 extra votes, and leading a mob. All equivalent, both sides, bla, bla, bla.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
I don't know about other schemes but NHS superannuation annuation recently had its liabilities substantially reduced in an actuarial analysis. Mostly this was due to improved annuity rates.
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
Yes many (most?) public sector workers are due a contributions cut because of that calculation. But Gvt sat on it to examine what McCloud meant in full.
I think that is the Universities Scheme.
There is no plan to reduce contribution rates for NHS Superannuation as far as I know.
£4.31 billion Net income from the NHS scheme for the exchequer this year is quite useful for Ms Reeves.
yes bit most of that "income" is employer contributions that are funded by government spending on the NHS in the first place
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Certainly Ukraine is going to need Europe to support if Trump is elected.
Our cupboard is bare. Germany under Scholz still won’t even give Taurus. And France is in flux. Thank god for the Poles and their huge defence spending.
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Certainly Ukraine is going to need Europe to support if Trump is elected.
It should but European and Canadian taxpayers are unlikely to be willing to fill the gap of cut US support. Even if Harris wins the GOP almost certainly wins one chamber of Congress and she will also want other nations in NATO to provide more of the funds for Zelensky though she would at least keep the US in NATO.
The BRICs nations are largely neutral between Ukraine and Russia and won't lift a finger for Zelensky whatever the US election result
As CGT is up with immediate effect, the amount I would now save by leaving the UK for 5 years stands at £59638 per annum over 5 years. Which is equivalent to a salary of 85k a year. Previous two jobs were 70k and 90k respectively, so split the difference and I can approximately afford to leave the UK, do nothing for five years, and end up in the same place as if I stayed here and worked.
The main reason for staying is that I'm still young-ish in my 40s and quite like work.
The main reason for leaving is the country is on its uppers and things are hardly likely to get better from here. Better to cash out now and enjoy one's retirement from warmer climes.
I'm less concerned about paying an extra 4% a year, more worried that the country is going to continue to get worse and my quality of life here will continue to decline.
As I said in the previous thread, if I do remain in the UK i will significantly alter my behaviour, making fewer capital disposals so as to incur less tax. If I leave I retire.
Decisions, decisions.
My feeling is that the UK is in terminal decline and this budget is another notch on the death spiral. The Tories screwed the pooch, but squeezing the life out of the private sector to give to the inefficient public sector is a one way ticket back to the 70s. So why not buy a one way ticket out...
Most of the 0% places are gonna seriously screw you over (far more than here) if you have certain recreational hobbies. Or accidentally annoy the local tyrants (far more than here). Just be aware of that.
If I were moving out of the country I'd be going somewhere in Africa, indeed it's my medium term plan atm to be 50% in Zambia. This makes no sense on a tax level but as a final frontier, it's very exciting.
I do indeed have *all* the recreational hobbies you imagine wouldn't go down well in Dubai.
The difference is, of course, I don't need to spend five years there. Or anywhere, for that matter.
If I decide to leave the UK the worst I'm out is a single year in the Crown Dependencies (I know Jersey and Guernsey well through work, so know what I'm in for - IoM less so) then I can rebase myself somewhere civilized like Portugal on the D7 visa for the remaining four years. The key is to be in a 0% CGT regime for the year of the disposal then anywhere else for a chuckle for the next 4 years. Not living in a gilded cage with no drugs or bum sex for the next 5 years...
The lack of drugs or bum sex ain't an issue for me. Don't do them, so won't miss them.
(Would miss the English seasons. And that BBC i-player doesn't work in a gilded cage. They're my sex and drugs these days. Can I still have rock'n'roll?)
But the UK Government would deffo miss the tax on what I'm planning though.
Trumpeting an end to non-dom status gets a cheer from the Labour MPs.
Closing hospital wards because those who were non-doms take their money elsewhere - will that get a cheer, Labour?
Labour is about to learn - rich people pay for the NHS. Oh, and also that rich people are the most mobile on the planet. Fuck them off - and off they fuck.
The people who end up making up the difference are those who just already got clobbered today. The ones left cutting the jobs or not buying that discretionary item with its lovely VAT take for the government.
Though you'll probably end up closing a hospital ward too, Labour.
I can do without both, tbh, I prefer women, though am open to other options. And prefer pints to other substances, but, again, I keep a broad mind. I would have fewer options in the middle east, rather than none
I do have an issue with countries who want to persecute people simply because of their sexual preferences, but I'm an old fashioned liberal. So it wouldn't be my first choice.
I agreee entirely with the substance of your post. Be it non doms or just rich people deciding to bugger off - I suppose I'm one of the latter - rich people largely fund all the services everyone else takes for granted.
Labour keep on saying the widest shoulders should bear the highest burden, while ignoring the fact that the richest in the UK already shoulder a huge amount of the tax burden. And are globally mobile. And use very few services.
As I say, I'm less concerned about the 4% CGT hike and how it affects me, and more concerned that the UK is in a doom loop of low growth and poorer living standards. If you're rich and you can leave, why not?
We’ll have to work out the consequences of that in due course.
But we’re too big just to be a tax haven.
The other way round for me. I'd rather catch a hundred billionaires at 10% tax than 0 blliionaires at 40% tax.
It is an unpleasant fact of life that the richer you are the more globally mobile you are. In an ideal world we would tax the ultra wealthy at a rate equal to or greater than we tax the middle and working classes.
But when the ultra rich are globally mobile, it's a bidding war - which we are badly losing.
They are people who pay for our services while using very few of them, and Labour is driving them away.
That's all true, but there's a very important point you're missing though.
Even if the billionaires pay 0% tax, they still enrich the country through buying goods and services here, investing money, creating wealth and businesses, supporting charities and cultural events, etc etc etc. So the country is vastly better off for having them.
We need to look at their contribution to society in the aggregate, not just as fat cows for the public sector to milk. That is the Socialist way of thinking, and one that has gone unchallenged for far too long.
So, you’re saying that the billionaires’ money kind of trickles down?
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
That’s more than a little concerning. It does sound like the US focus is now much more on Israel and the Middle East issues, than what’s going on in Eastern Europe.
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Certainly Ukraine is going to need Europe to support if Trump is elected.
Our cupboard is bare. Germany under Scholz still won’t even give Taurus. And France is in flux. Thank god for the Poles and their huge defence spending.
The budget commits the UK to £3bn of spending in support of Ukraine "for as long as it takes". You can argue that is not enough, and it certainly won't be enough if Trump wins next week, but it is not nothing.
WRT the budget, while like everyone else I can make individual criticisms, but over the big picture, what do her many critics think she should have done differently and how?
I'm not at all sure I have heard or seen a radically 'alternative budget' covering the totality of tax, spend and borrow from anyone or anywhere; including from the Tories. Has anyone?
I've had a go, albeit only in the broadest of terms. I said I broadly agreed with the tax rises but was appalled at the level of additional spending and, consequentially, borrowing. A reset should have put us on an even keel. Our borrowing has been out of control since Covid. It is actually quite scary that it is going higher.
I would accept that we needed more money on defence and Ukraine. I would even accept that the NHS is currently a bottomless pit and that, until we find a better way, there is not much choice about throwing more money at it. But the priority should have been to find as many cuts as possible to offset these additional sums and, at the very least, keep the increase in spending to less than the increase in taxes.
We had 14 years of cuts. There's precious little left to cut.
Cuts? Government expenditure is the highest it has been since the 70s.
The problem is - as always - that there are some parts of the government budget that grow irrespective: simply, irrespective of what is going on in the world, the amount of money we pay out in pensions will rise, because there aree more retirees and the triple lock.
This means that the rest of the government budget is under perpetual pressure.
The State Pension is going to cost an additional £31 billion per year by the end of the parliament.
(or the cost of HS2 to Manchester)
The state pension is a drop in the bucket compared to the public sector pension issue
I think you’re confusing annual payments with total liabilities.
No I realise they are total liabilities but thge annual figure is also ever increasing and as the article nots tax payers are on the hook for the difference between the funding and total cost
I don't know about other schemes but NHS superannuation annuation recently had its liabilities substantially reduced in an actuarial analysis. Mostly this was due to improved annuity rates.
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
Yes many (most?) public sector workers are due a contributions cut because of that calculation. But Gvt sat on it to examine what McCloud meant in full.
I think that is the Universities Scheme.
There is no plan to reduce contribution rates for NHS Superannuation as far as I know.
£4.31 billion Net income from the NHS scheme for the exchequer this year is quite useful for Ms Reeves.
yes bit most of that "income" is employer contributions that are funded by government spending on the NHS in the first place
It's normal for employers as well as employees to contribute to pensions.
Currently the NHS Trust contributes 14.38% of my salary and I contribute 14.5% to NHS superannuation, so a lot of money goes in to fund these pensions. NHS superannuation is "unfunded" in the sense that there is no fund, but not "unfunded" in the sense that contributions do not exist.
The point stands: in this financial year NHS pensions scheme is paying £4.31 billion into Treasury coffers so is the very opposite of a national expense.
She has become a genuinely compelling politician. Really exceptional. I hope it’s enough.
Really, I hope she wins as the alternative would be a disaster for the global economy but she strikes me as mediocre at best.
If the Republicans had a decent candidate this election wouldn't be close - the only reason the result isn't obvious is because Trump is their candidate..
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
You are right. I think social care is an issue a bit like "growth" that we have been talking about, or reforming the tax system.
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
That describes this budget to a "t". Huge but not actually very radical.
The UK has the largest tax code in the world. It is literally impossible to understand and impossible to comply with without using expensive software.
It makes the cost of collection and compliance much higher. Addressing that problem would solve many of the issues that Rachel Reeves just threw several billion quid at.
Comments
"As at 31 March 2023 the pension liabilities of the Scheme were valued at £460.6 billion. This is a decrease of £380.3 billion from the liabilities at 31 March 2022 of £840.9 billion. As the NHS Pension Scheme is an unfunded scheme, these liabilities are underwritten by the Exchequer."
In this tax year NHS superannuation is paying in £4.31 billion INTO national coffers as contributions exceed payments made:
"In cash terms, the Scheme recorded a Net Cash Requirement (NCR) of minus £4.31 billion against the voted estimate of minus £3.44 billion, this means the Scheme has surplus cash due to income exceeding pension benefit payments, and the £4.31 billion will be returned to HMT during 2024-25."
Both from the NHSBA report here:
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/2024-08/NHS Pension Scheme Accounts 2023-24.pdf
But as I said above, you don’t need public sector pension funds (and arguably it’s a waste to have them) you just need to manage the in year expenditure by varying current contributions and medium term retirement ages.
There is no plan to reduce contribution rates for NHS Superannuation as far as I know.
£4.31 billion Net income from the NHS scheme for the exchequer this year is quite useful for Ms Reeves.
Edit - but then that applies to most LAs, like my local county council which started taking a knife to vital services whilst protecting a stupidly big reserve and continuing to own a mine and bags of farm land.
£22bn for NHS.
This makes my blood boil.
When will the political class wake up to the social care crisis and finally accept health and social care are the same fucking thing? All part of a continuum of care. Directly linked. Hospitals cannot discharge because the care homes don't have staff and beds, OTs so short in supply it takes months to get an assessment to send someone home etc etc.
I am so bloody sick of this. Every single budget, year after year, decade after decade. Labour or Conservative.
The total cost to the government would have been lower. But it's too late to do anything now as the size of liability is too large to catch up.
Of course that is a misleading figure for how much it affects life, when one is set up for it. You can be driving down a dirt track 50km from the nearest paved road these days and half the (basically) mud huts have solar. And there's starlink now too!
(It needs sorting of course. But third world is where we really see the solar revolution. And also, I have to say, despite what evangalists say don't generally see the cryptocurrency revolution... just more scams)
This is the problem, sadly. Our total inability to deal with the dissonance between a social system that was set up to service the needs of a population that died in their late sixties or early seventies, vs their late eighties or nineties as they do now.
The sums do not add up. The nettle has to be grasped.
Google's "Gemini" model was especially bad. As a basic test I gave it two potential job candidates to assess. Both had varying skills, male/female, soft/hard skills, etc. Except one of them had been shot and killed the night before.
Sometimes it would pick that up. But only in terms of affecting how soon they could start. Even though it would comment that the candidate was 'intelligible', then go on to lecture you on how you should only compare skills as that was unbiased.
https://x.com/therealbuzz/status/1851628221013622787?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
When mine goes through I will be due a 5 figure tax rebate according to my accountant as will need to recalculate the annual allowances for the tax years 2016-21. This is due to the way our 1995 scheme and 2015 scheme calculate the AA, but after McCloud only 1995 scheme applies to the AA.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fixing-the-foundations-public-spending-audit-2024-25/fixing-the-foundations-public-spending-audit-2024-25-html#:~:text=The Chancellor has launched a,will conclude in spring 2025.
The rise in minimum wage and in Employer NI is going to have a big impact on the sector too. Charges for SC will have to go up.
I suspect a lot of this is to do with optics of ministers cutting ribbons outside whizzy new buildings that house the latest proton-whatsit scanner costing millions whereas no one gives a monkeys that care workers only get 15mins to take someone to the toilet, change their bedding, make a cup of tea and somehow also talk to the caree.
"Rail fares set to rise in England next year"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62j7q452jro
Having a funded scheme would require governments to balance current spending and expenditure throughout (exc. borrowing) and not encourage them into creating huge off balance sheet liabilities for future generations of taxpayers to deal with.
Overall I don't think this year's is a bad budget, but as also said earlier on, if in the long-term this is not just a postponement, that will be a mistake.
https://x.com/katesullivandc/status/1851749562802933966
We all know these are major problems. Few people have a good idea of exactly how to fix those issues. Even fewer are willing to stake the political capital to actually tackle them . So nothing happens from parliament to parliament.
And frankly the UK public would almost certainly reject a party that had good ideas about these issues. Too big a change, too scary, too risky, so keep patching and tweaking the broken systems.
If we had government debt at 40% of GDP I'd suggest it was a good idea. At 100%, we're approaching the limit of what markers will lend to us, so I'd be more cautious.
But the principle of this is why borrowing to invest (as per the budget today) is economically sound in a way that borrowing for current spending isn't: it is possible to make a positive net return from it. But it does rely on the investments not being a basket case.
But of course the tendency is to fund the service that deals with someone who's fallen over and broken a hip or had a stroke rather than the one that might stop some of those incidents happening and save you money.
To use an analogy, we've been a bit like Man United at the moment, in terms of being caught between trying to keep up a level fans/patients expect at the expense of neglecting the underlying issues.
I don't think that is stupidity, waste, or venality though. It's human nature. We want to alleviate immediate pain and pay the cost over the lower cost of possibly preventing it ever happening. You need some bravery to do it. Thankfully, Streeting seems to have some - though whether enough is a real question.
Trump 50.9% chance of winning
Harris 48.8% chance of winning
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1851766862905839801
They will still be playing back the "island of trash" comment to the Peurto Rican communities. In all those swing states.
Edit to add: we and the other equity fund manager did so well, that they took the money away from us and put it in bonds because they were no longer in deficit.
We get to see what Leigh-Mallory's Big Wing can finally do.
No great growth agenda. Official OBR projection is for ongoing stagnation.
No attempts to grasp nettle on triple lock, or council tax, or social care, or pensioner’s NI, or income tax cliff edges.
It’s a solid “C”, which is better than what we’ve seen for a while, but it’s not very good either.
https://news.sky.com/story/russia-fines-google-more-than-worlds-entire-gdp-for-blocking-youtube-accounts-13245208
The absence of any broader vision of what might be achievable by a new government with a monster majority pushes it to - at best - a D.
Or by next year, enough to buy a loaf in Moscow.
Guys, that's a googol, not a google...
It suit the politicians, the pollsters, the media, none of whom can be proven wrong if it really was a coin toss after all.
The problem will come if it ends up with a landslide one way or the other.
Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in swing states? Not so much...
Meanwhile, the actual sitting president goes for a repeat of Hillary’s “Deplorables” moment from eight years ago.
Are GOP-Leaning Pollsters Biasing The Averages? (No.)
https://split-ticket.org/2024/10/29/are-gop-leaning-pollsters-biasing-the-averages/
Even more so when one of the players is pure "entertainment".*
*Damning of the US when their "entertainment" includes racism, misogyny, sexual assault and most of the cruder elements of life.
Those who know me well know I’m not much of an optimist.
But gather ‘round the campfire. Let me explain why I’m bullish on Harris in PA — and it has nothing to do with polls or early/mail voting.
https://x.com/admcrlsn/status/1851777513577468312
He's like a big stuffed toy for LaCivita to play with these days. Dress him up. Put him on a prop. Call it a campaign. <</i>
https://x.com/emptywheel/status/1851759432633393539
One reason the Red Wave did not materialise in 2022, is because the Republicans did far better than expected, in down-ballot elections, in 2020.
You can select words to mute:
https://x.com/AustinTunnell/status/1851442999667855763
“After today’s press conference by Zelenskyy where it turned out that the White House leaked the secret parts of that plan, refused to supply missiles in principle because that’s escalation, and Ukraine received only 10% of that April 2024 package, I have absolutely zero doubt left that the U.S. is done with this war. We’re being deliberately put in a situation where we’re bleeding so much that we'll ask for negotiations, agree to cease the land, and shelve the NATO membership prospect forever. Yes, don’t have any illusions about that. Ukraine won’t be in NATO despite whatever memorandum crap is written there. That’s all there is to it”
He has his old school American Preacher act. His speech pattern, cadence, tone everything is as if he is building them up and going to ask them to raise their hands and praise the Lord and drive out the devil. If it wasn’t so important it would be fascinating to listen to more.
The second mode is Circus Ringmaster where he is rousing the crowd from the centre of the tent. I was listening again this morning and he delivers the “Make America Powerful/Wealthy/Great Again” lines brilliantly, powerfully. He gets the crowd going, he’s punchy.
I really want him to lose as I think that dull predictability with Harris is better for the world than chaotic instability with Trump but I can see why, apart from what he says, how he speaks to the people attracts the average Joe.
The ship gained some notoriety as it is carrying 20,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate from Russia, and was seen as being a floating bomb.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqxw8r97jgzo
I wonder what deal was done to allow this? Whatever, it's a good thing for the crew.
Just as long as it does not go BOOM in port...
European nations are going to have to step up to the plate here, alongside a serious diplomatic effort on the BRICS and other ‘neutral’ nations to also take an interest.
Amazingly a real if tiny un-manipulated photo of Trump.
https://x.com/benjiwade/status/1851843736470442469?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Especially as Trump will do far, far worse than Biden. He will sell Ukraine down the river.
Shame on anyone who supports or shills for Trump.
"We pledge to protect working people's payslips"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/30/german-economy-growth-gdp-recession-fears-end
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/30/us-inflation-gdp
He thinks 61-65% of total votes have now been cast.
Very roughly, he’s looking at a Republican lead of 80,000 in rural counties, 40,000 in Washoe, vs a Democratic lead of 100,000 in Clark.
In a State where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans, that’s good news for the latter.
I’m guessing the horrible flooding may dent Spain’s remarkable record,
She has become a genuinely compelling politician. Really exceptional. I hope it’s enough.
As I said, shame on anyone who supports or shills for Trump. Even conspiraloons.
Zelensky on North Korean soldiers entering the war. “The west is in denial… they are silent…”. Refers to their “escalation fears”. “I do not know how many soldiers from North Korea or Iran may come”.
Something has changes in recent months with western policy in Ukraine. I don’t think it relates to the UK election. More likely it’s the changed balance of power in Washington since Biden announced his withdrawal. But who knows.
The BRICs nations are largely neutral between Ukraine and Russia and won't lift a finger for Zelensky whatever the US election result
Currently the NHS Trust contributes 14.38% of my salary and I contribute 14.5% to NHS superannuation, so a lot of money goes in to fund these pensions. NHS superannuation is "unfunded" in the sense that there is no fund, but not "unfunded" in the sense that contributions do not exist.
The point stands: in this financial year NHS pensions scheme is paying £4.31 billion into Treasury coffers so is the very opposite of a national expense.
Nikki Haley would have beaten Harris comfortably
The UK has the largest tax code in the world. It is literally impossible to understand and impossible to comply with without using expensive software.
It makes the cost of collection and compliance much higher. Addressing that problem would solve many of the issues that Rachel Reeves just threw several billion quid at.