Could this explain the Betfair market? – politicalbetting.com

System · October 31

Could this explain the Betfair market? – politicalbetting.com

Scoop: Blockchain researchers have found evidence of rampant wash trading on the leading electoral betting site Polymarket, with Chaos Labs concluding that one-third of volume on its presidential market is likely artificial pic.twitter.com/UyuylpUL6g

Read the full story here

MattW · October 31

Zuerst. Bugger, Zusecond.

Why are lawyers always late?

You need a lawyer timer to remind you to end your conversation at 5.5, 11.5, 17.5 etc minutes.
https://balengore.github.io/public/stopwatch.html

partypoliticalorphan · October 31

First and don't think my fiver would shift the markets much.

Nigelb · October 31

If it's true, then it means great value for Harris backers.

algarkirk · October 31

A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.

Glossary required.

IanB2 · October 31

FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.

Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.

IanB2 · October 31

The value lies with Harris if only because Trump supporters around the world are sufficiently fanatical to be backing their man regardless of the actual chances.

DavidL · October 31

538 currently has Trump the favourite 52:48. That's about as close to a toss up as you can find and it was actually 51:49 yesterday. 538 claims to take a lot of other things into account but it is largely poll driven and we all have our reservations about them. It is, however, probably the best we have on the available data.

Which makes the Betfair market look distinctly odd and, as @TSE says, Harris value. I have a suspicion that this actually suits both sides. Trump needs to be seen as a winner to have any standing at all. I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.

Nigelb · October 31

On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?

eek · October 31

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?

Unlikely - I think we've just seen a 12% increase in the hourly rate of a care worker...

Sandpit · October 31

eek said:

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?
Unlikely - I think we've just seen a 12% increase in the hourly rate of a care worker...

Plus a 12% increase in the NI contributions their employer will have to pay, plus a 12% increase in the VAT their employer will have to add to the bill if they come to the home through an agency.

TheScreamingEagles · October 31

algarkirk said:
A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.

Glossary required.

Bots and people with deep pockets have been caught manipulating Polymarket into a pro Trump position.

The question is have their tentacles of doom spread to Betfair?

eek · October 31

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.

Twin A bought her house from someone who moved into a home where the council was paying.

The amount of pressure the council was applying to the family selling was such that I know I could have reduced our offer and they would have accepted - I'm too much of a gentleman to do that though.

Nigelb · October 31

DavidL said:
538 currently has Trump the favourite 52:48. That's about as close to a toss up as you can find and it was actually 51:49 yesterday. 538 claims to take a lot of other things into account but it is largely poll driven and we all have our reservations about them. It is, however, probably the best we have on the available data.

Which makes the Betfair market look distinctly odd and, as @TSE says, Harris value. I have a suspicion that this actually suits both sides. Trump needs to be seen as a winner to have any standing at all. I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.

The early voting numbers are also leading to what's very likely ill founded GOP confidence and/or Democratic panic.

Y'all. This is ridiculous. Trump is a 50/50 proposition to win Nevada right now (I can even see 60/40 if you really want to try), and he could easily win it. But you are not going to find evidence of a red wave in early voting unless you're looking to validate priors...
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851859609461624906

StillWaters · October 31

DavidL said:
538 currently has Trump the favourite 52:48. That's about as close to a toss up as you can find and it was actually 51:49 yesterday. 538 claims to take a lot of other things into account but it is largely poll driven and we all have our reservations about them. It is, however, probably the best we have on the available data.

Which makes the Betfair market look distinctly odd and, as @TSE says, Harris value. I have a suspicion that this actually suits both sides. Trump needs to be seen as a winner to have any standing at all. I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.

Surely rather than backing Harris you should be shorting Trump Social?

Eabhal · October 31

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.

Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.

IanB2 · October 31

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?

If the budget unwravels in the media, it could well be when it dawns on commentators that a big slice of the extra funding for health, schools, councils and the rest will be eaten up by the government's own employers' NI increase. Indeed by my reckoning the extra NI for a typical local council's workforce will cost more than the 1.5% real increase in funding that Reeves threw them in yesterday's speech, assuming a pay rise in April that is near CPI.

Nigelb · October 31

Great closing argument from the doofus who is House Speaker.
(And also the guy that denied any aid for Ukraine for half a year.)

Confident of a big win, Mike Johnson promises he and Trump will abolish Obamacare and bring back denial of insurance for preexisting conditions.
https://x.com/joshtpm/status/1851405280216526870

RochdalePioneers · October 31

"Perhaps one da?y we will find out why some people are trying to manipulate the betting markets like this."

We know why: To create the narrative that the election was stolen. Musk is literally counting off the % figures on this market as Trump gets higher and higher. So if you live inside the MAGA bullshit bubble you are voting Trump, everyone is voting Trump all the polls and the betting markets show Trump winning bigly, and you're being fed bullshit about Dems trying to cheat.

If Harris wins, this market will be "proof" that Trump won and therefore that the election was stolen.

eek · October 31

TheScreamingEagles said:

algarkirk said:
A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.

Glossary required.
Bots and people with deep pockets have been caught manipulating Polymarket into a pro Trump position.

The question is have their tentacles of doom spread to Betfair?

Probably but equally the market could simply be irrational - who around here has a real idea what the US result, every report you read is contradictory..

Nigelb · October 31

TheScreamingEagles said:

algarkirk said:
A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.

Glossary required.
Bots and people with deep pockets have been caught manipulating Polymarket into a pro Trump position.

The question is have their tentacles of doom spread to Betfair?

There has to be at least some arb between the two markets, which would tend to push up Betfair odds in sympathy.
I've no idea how you might track that, though.

Stuartinromford · October 31

TheScreamingEagles said:

algarkirk said:
A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.

Glossary required.
Bots and people with deep pockets have been caught manipulating Polymarket into a pro Trump position.

The question is have their tentacles of doom spread to Betfair?

How does one distinguish manipulation from very very rich mug punters?

Sandpit · October 31

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.

If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.

Eabhal · October 31

Interesting that a few commentators think the OBR's growth forecast is a bit pessimistic. If that's correct, there will be much more cash to play with at the end of the parliament, and I wonder if that is also why the market reaction hasn't been so bad.

I still think more physical investment, or the kind of spending that is likely to reduce pressures in the future, would have been better for growth. HS2 to Manchester, public health (including active travel/playing fields), a GB Energy owned wind farm, a tidal pond prototype, housing... Education is the one area that looks very positive from a long-term growth perspective however.

LostPassword · October 31

Every time you make personal and private information accessible to a large number of people you will find some of those people accessing it out of curiosity or for other inappropriate reasons. This example is from NI with police body-worn camera footage.

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2024/10/31/psni-take-action-against-74-officers-over-accessing-body-worn-camera-footage-2/

Sandpit · October 31

On topic, it was highlighted a couple of weeks ago that there’s at least one whale, a known French investor, who has millions all one way on Trump on Polymarket, which feeds into other markets as people see arb opportunities.

I think we mostly agree on here that it’s still a 50/50 race, give or take a 3-point margin of error, in which case backing Harris at 2.8 or thereabouts definitely represents the value in the current market.

The value in this market has been backing whoever is odds-against at any one time, since the day Biden announced he wasn’t running.

MaxPB · October 31

IanB2 said:

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?
If the budget unwravels in the media, it could well be when it dawns on commentators that a big slice of the extra funding for health, schools, councils and the rest will be eaten up by the government's own employers' NI increase. Indeed by my reckoning the extra NI for a typical local council's workforce will cost more than the 1.5% real increase in funding that Reeves threw them in yesterday's speech, assuming a pay rise in April that is near CPI.

I think Labour will have to implement pay freezes across big chunks of the public sector fir a few years to make the NI tax figures work out. I don't think they have the fortitude to see off the unions on it though.

TimS · October 31

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.

Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.

Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.

Sean_F · October 31

Nigelb said:

DavidL said:
538 currently has Trump the favourite 52:48. That's about as close to a toss up as you can find and it was actually 51:49 yesterday. 538 claims to take a lot of other things into account but it is largely poll driven and we all have our reservations about them. It is, however, probably the best we have on the available data.

Which makes the Betfair market look distinctly odd and, as @TSE says, Harris value. I have a suspicion that this actually suits both sides. Trump needs to be seen as a winner to have any standing at all. I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.
The early voting numbers are also leading to what's very likely ill founded GOP confidence and/or Democratic panic.

Y'all. This is ridiculous. Trump is a 50/50 proposition to win Nevada right now (I can even see 60/40 if you really want to try), and he could easily win it. But you are not going to find evidence of a red wave in early voting unless you're looking to validate priors...
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851859609461624906

I’d certainly be confident, if I were running the Republicans’ campaign in Nevada.

But, no one should extrapolate from Nevada to, say, Michigan.

TheScreamingEagles · October 31

Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.

TimS · October 31

Eabhal said:
Interesting that a few commentators think the OBR's growth forecast is a bit pessimistic. If that's correct, there will be much more cash to play with at the end of the parliament, and I wonder if that is also why the market reaction hasn't been so bad.

I still think more physical investment, or the kind of spending that is likely to reduce pressures in the future, would have been better for growth. HS2 to Manchester, public health (including active travel/playing fields), a GB Energy owned wind farm, a tidal pond prototype, housing... Education is the one area that looks very positive from a long-term growth perspective however.

We (my firm’s economics unit) think the OBR is a bit too optimistic. Their productivity forecasts are rather unrealistic and have been for a couple of years.

MattW · October 31

FPT:

Eabhal said:

MattW said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

bondegezou said:

DavidL said:

algarkirk said:
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'd kick them in the butt to get their road crime video reporting portal up and running, that they have been sloping shoulders on for several years. And is even now not happening until 2025.

These do fantastic things for efficiency, and save a lot of police officer time.

In Scotland at present it has to be reported, then a copper comes out to take a statement, rather than just uploading one with the video evidence. It is medieval.
True. A portal will lead to many more prosecutions at low cost - but it's still an additional cost compared with *doing nothing at all*.

The same for the NHS. They keep finding amazing ways to keep unhealthy people alive who would have previously died from heart disease or something. That's also a productivity gain, yet also leads to more costs.

This is the conundrum across the whole of the public sector.

I think the cost effectiveness justifies it; we have data on time saved, and we know the benefits with other crime detection.

The cost of a portal is not very much, it's a small team of officers and civilian staff to run it, and the number who go to Court are in fractions of a percent.

It is reducing hours of officer time to deal with each incident down to minutes.

I think objections are more cultural, and maybe political (internal politics and political politics).

ajb · October 31

DavidL said:

I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.

But if the former is correct then wouldn't the Dems be better off if they weren't "a small bit behind"?

Foxy · October 31

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.

Yes, my MiL was in a very nice care home and very well looked after for 18 months, but the fees left only £50 000 from the sale of her bungalow for Mrs Foxy and her sister.

Personally I thought that fine, as that's what her savings were for, to keep her comfortable and well fed in her dotage.

It is a bit of a lottery though. Not all of us get to keel over quickly and painlessly reaching for the ketchup as Alec Salmond did the other week.

LostPassword · October 31

Eabhal said:
Interesting that a few commentators think the OBR's growth forecast is a bit pessimistic. If that's correct, there will be much more cash to play with at the end of the parliament, and I wonder if that is also why the market reaction hasn't been so bad.

I still think more physical investment, or the kind of spending that is likely to reduce pressures in the future, would have been better for growth. HS2 to Manchester, public health (including active travel/playing fields), a GB Energy owned wind farm, a tidal pond prototype, housing... Education is the one area that looks very positive from a long-term growth perspective however.

If the OBR prove to be cautious there won't be any more cash to play with. There will be somewhat less extra debt being incurred.

Whatever giveaways Reeves is going she can unveil ahead of the next GE will be paid for by debt, not by surplus cash.

Sean_F · October 31

MaxPB said:

IanB2 said:

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?
If the budget unwravels in the media, it could well be when it dawns on commentators that a big slice of the extra funding for health, schools, councils and the rest will be eaten up by the government's own employers' NI increase. Indeed by my reckoning the extra NI for a typical local council's workforce will cost more than the 1.5% real increase in funding that Reeves threw them in yesterday's speech, assuming a pay rise in April that is near CPI.
I think Labour will have to implement pay freezes across big chunks of the public sector fir a few years to make the NI tax figures work out. I don't think they have the fortitude to see off the unions on it though.

I’d expect see further tax rises, to cover the extra costs imposed upon public sector pay budgets.

eek · October 31

It seems the carbon capture scheme is even more useless than we think it is

https://theteessidelead.substack.com/p/net-zero-teesside-developer-over?

Equinor, one of the partners of Net Zero Teesside on the Teesworks estate, has overestimated its carbon capture capabilities over a five year period.

“Due to a flawed flow transmitter at Equinor’s CO2 injection facilities at Sleipner, the figures for CO2 injected were over-reported in the period 2017-2021.”

Equinor has recalculated the amount of CO2 captured at Sleipner from 2.1 million tonnes down to 1.6 million tonnes over those five years, an overestimation of more than 30%.

MattW · October 31

TimS said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.

Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.

I think this is important; there is no reason why IHT should be restricted to such a tiny % of estates.

I think the inclusion of never-taxed left over parts of pension pots will be a change there, which is a start.

I'd predict that they will get onto the loopholes around lifetime gifts and similar in a future budget.

Can we expect more strategic reforms next year, perhaps? I'm not sure whether she will do the "Twice a Year Rishi" thing.

MaxPB · October 31

TimS said:

Eabhal said:
Interesting that a few commentators think the OBR's growth forecast is a bit pessimistic. If that's correct, there will be much more cash to play with at the end of the parliament, and I wonder if that is also why the market reaction hasn't been so bad.

I still think more physical investment, or the kind of spending that is likely to reduce pressures in the future, would have been better for growth. HS2 to Manchester, public health (including active travel/playing fields), a GB Energy owned wind farm, a tidal pond prototype, housing... Education is the one area that looks very positive from a long-term growth perspective however.
We (my firm’s economics unit) think the OBR is a bit too optimistic. Their productivity forecasts are rather unrealistic and have been for a couple of years.

Yes, I think given the likely drop in disposable income and business investment you could easily take 0.3% off per year of the forecast and still be too high.

eek · October 31

IanB2 said:

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?
If the budget unwravels in the media, it could well be when it dawns on commentators that a big slice of the extra funding for health, schools, councils and the rest will be eaten up by the government's own employers' NI increase. Indeed by my reckoning the extra NI for a typical local council's workforce will cost more than the 1.5% real increase in funding that Reeves threw them in yesterday's speech, assuming a pay rise in April that is near CPI.

The change in the starting point is going to consume that 1.5% by itself before anything else.

Nigelb · October 31

Sean_F said:

Nigelb said:

DavidL said:
538 currently has Trump the favourite 52:48. That's about as close to a toss up as you can find and it was actually 51:49 yesterday. 538 claims to take a lot of other things into account but it is largely poll driven and we all have our reservations about them. It is, however, probably the best we have on the available data.

Which makes the Betfair market look distinctly odd and, as @TSE says, Harris value. I have a suspicion that this actually suits both sides. Trump needs to be seen as a winner to have any standing at all. I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.
The early voting numbers are also leading to what's very likely ill founded GOP confidence and/or Democratic panic.

Y'all. This is ridiculous. Trump is a 50/50 proposition to win Nevada right now (I can even see 60/40 if you really want to try), and he could easily win it. But you are not going to find evidence of a red wave in early voting unless you're looking to validate priors...
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851859609461624906

I’d certainly be confident, if I were running the Republicans’ campaign in Nevada.

But, no one should extrapolate from Nevada to, say, Michigan.

I wouldn't.
Like most of the swing states, it's probably a coin flip. The fact that more Republicans are taking advantage of early voting doesn't, in itself, mean all that much.

Eabhal · October 31

MattW said:
FPT:
Eabhal said:

MattW said:

Foxy said:

DavidL said:

bondegezou said:

DavidL said:

algarkirk said:
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'd kick them in the butt to get their road crime video reporting portal up and running, that they have been sloping shoulders on for several years. And is even now not happening until 2025.

These do fantastic things for efficiency, and save a lot of police officer time.

In Scotland at present it has to be reported, then a copper comes out to take a statement, rather than just uploading one with the video evidence. It is medieval.
True. A portal will lead to many more prosecutions at low cost - but it's still an additional cost compared with *doing nothing at all*.

The same for the NHS. They keep finding amazing ways to keep unhealthy people alive who would have previously died from heart disease or something. That's also a productivity gain, yet also leads to more costs.

This is the conundrum across the whole of the public sector.
I think the cost effectiveness justifies it; we have data on time saved, and we know the benefits with other crime detection.

The cost of a portal is not very much, it's a small team of officers and civilian staff to run it, and the number who go to Court are in fractions of a percent.

It is reducing hours of officer time to deal with each incident down to minutes.

I think objections are more cultural, and maybe political (internal politics and political politics).

I think there was also a question mark around Scots Law and the use of video or photo evidence from one witness. Hasn't been an issue in my cases (or my friends) but apparently there was some nerves at PFO.

Ratters · October 31

TheScreamingEagles said:
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.

Viewed another way, it's a good way to stop any potential inflation wage price spiral?

londonpubman · October 31

MattW said:

TimS said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.

Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
I think this is important; there is no reason why IHT should be restricted to such a tiny % of estates.

I think the inclusion of never-taxed left over parts of pension pots will be a change there, which is a start.

I'd predict that they will get onto the loopholes around lifetime gifts and similar in a future budget.

Can we expect more strategic reforms next year, perhaps? I'm not sure whether she will do the "Twice a Year Rishi" thing.

I think the intention is to have one fiscal event/budget a year. This is a good thing as two budgets/events created unnecessary instability/variation in the tax regime.

wooliedyed · October 31

Morning everyone. Gilts having a mini wobble this morning on opening but I think we have at least avoided Trussification of the economy for now.
Looking at some of the videos of Labour/Starmers promises- to farmers etc, this administration and budget is starting to have a Clegg/LDs/Tuition Fees feel.
From 34% Labour dont need to lose much support to have no chance of a majority, especially with tactical unwind to factor in next time

BartholomewRoberts · October 31

It will be absolutely hilarious if some crypto bro loses a quarter of a million bet at 99.7%.

What is that, 333/1 in old money?

DecrepiterJohnL · October 31

The Racing Post today includes William Kedjanyi's analysis of the American election.

TL/DR of whole page: polls much closer than the betting suggesting Kamala overpriced. Both campaigns looking to mobilise new voters: Kamala targeting lady voters; Trump targeting young men (hence that podcast Leon told us about). Therefore, high turnout, close election.

2024 US presidential election predictions

Kamala Harris to win 80,000,000 or more votes
10-11 bet365

Kamala Harris to win 270-299 Electoral College votes
7-2 Betfair, BoyleSports, Paddy Power

Donald Trump to win 270-299 Electoral College votes
5-2 Hills
https://www.racingpost.com/sport/special-events/politics/us-election-2024-odds-best-bets-and-predictions-aSJch6p0Dj1X/

MaxPB · October 31

eek said:

IanB2 said:

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?
If the budget unwravels in the media, it could well be when it dawns on commentators that a big slice of the extra funding for health, schools, councils and the rest will be eaten up by the government's own employers' NI increase. Indeed by my reckoning the extra NI for a typical local council's workforce will cost more than the 1.5% real increase in funding that Reeves threw them in yesterday's speech, assuming a pay rise in April that is near CPI.
The change in the starting point is going to consume that 1.5% by itself before anything else.

The NI rises will cost the NHS about £1.5bn per year to cover, the care sector won't be as large but it will be in the many hundreds of millions.

Morris_Dancer · October 31

Good morning, everyone.

It's interesting that Labour has so much bad news ahead of time rather than the usual good news leaking. Be interesting to see how this affects perception of the Budget over time.

Dumbosaurus · October 31

RochdalePioneers said:
"Perhaps one da?y we will find out why some people are trying to manipulate the betting markets like this."

We know why: To create the narrative that the election was stolen. Musk is literally counting off the % figures on this market as Trump gets higher and higher. So if you live inside the MAGA bullshit bubble you are voting Trump, everyone is voting Trump all the polls and the betting markets show Trump winning bigly, and you're being fed bullshit about Dems trying to cheat.

If Harris wins, this market will be "proof" that Trump won and therefore that the election was stolen.

A reminder as well that polymarket settles where crypto bros want it to settle. The settlement mechanism is both theoretically ingenious and real world immensely flawed.

No way on earth would I have a significant short trump on polymarket long trump on betfair arb on into settlement.

It may be that taking these incentives into account polymarket is about right.

Scott_xP · October 31

Trump's entire life in a single image

Sandpit · October 31

TimS said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.

Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.

Agricultural property used to be exempt, so yesterday’s changes are simply a tax rise that sends even more money to the lawyers and accountants.

Sandpit · October 31

TheScreamingEagles said:
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.

Two questions there.

1. Titanic, on your phone?
2. 8am and your battery is nearly dead. Did you stay ‘out’ last night?

BartholomewRoberts · October 31

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.

If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.

wooliedyed · October 31

Morris_Dancer said:
Good morning, everyone.

It's interesting that Labour has so much bad news ahead of time rather than the usual good news leaking. Be interesting to see how this affects perception of the Budget over time.

The opposition tactic needs to be painting Labour as not credible on any commitment they make, as wind twisters prepared to lie through their teeth then hammer every single u turn, change and 'unmanifestoed' policy.
That, I think, will have more effect on votes than any longer term impact of the measures

Scott_xP · October 31

Sandpit said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.

Two questions there.

1. Titanic, on your phone?
2. 8am and your battery is nearly dead. Did you stay ‘out’ last night?

Is that the "work" phone, or the burner...

DecrepiterJohnL · October 31

OT F1 fans might be interested in Marina Hyde's TRiE observation that the Formula 1 exhibition currently at the Excel Centre in that there London has attracted a lot of young women introduced to the sport by the Netflix series, Drive to Survive. Motor racing is no longer just for petrol heads, apparently.

nico679 · October 31

Sean_F said:

Nigelb said:

DavidL said:
538 currently has Trump the favourite 52:48. That's about as close to a toss up as you can find and it was actually 51:49 yesterday. 538 claims to take a lot of other things into account but it is largely poll driven and we all have our reservations about them. It is, however, probably the best we have on the available data.

Which makes the Betfair market look distinctly odd and, as @TSE says, Harris value. I have a suspicion that this actually suits both sides. Trump needs to be seen as a winner to have any standing at all. I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.
The early voting numbers are also leading to what's very likely ill founded GOP confidence and/or Democratic panic.

Y'all. This is ridiculous. Trump is a 50/50 proposition to win Nevada right now (I can even see 60/40 if you really want to try), and he could easily win it. But you are not going to find evidence of a red wave in early voting unless you're looking to validate priors...
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/1851859609461624906

I’d certainly be confident, if I were running the Republicans’ campaign in Nevada.

But, no one should extrapolate from Nevada to, say, Michigan.

Dem turnout is lagging in Clark County . This is often the case Rep registered normally have better turnout but it used to be that because Dems were far ahead in terms of actual registrations they had some buffer . This time that gap has narrowed significantly and Dem turnout is even worse . What complicates matters is the new auto registration of voters so more now appear as non-affiliated unless they make an active decision to change that .

Then we have the issue about what the actual Election Day turnout will be . The GOP normally win this but it could be different this year with changes in voting patterns since the pandemic and the GOP have pushed more early voting .

Across all the polling there is an issue re the gender make up of the electorate . If pollsters stick to previous splits then this could under estimate the female vote .

GIN1138 · October 31

Sandpit said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.

Two questions there.

1. Titanic, on your phone?
2. 8am and your battery is nearly dead. Did you stay ‘out’ last night?

We demand answers @TheScreamingEagles and we demand them now!!!!

DecrepiterJohnL · October 31

Morris_Dancer said:
Good morning, everyone.

It's interesting that Labour has so much bad news ahead of time rather than the usual good news leaking. Be interesting to see how this affects perception of the Budget over time.

The hysteria about the budget in some parts of the media was astonishing, and anecdotally has led to poor decisions like selling businesses at large discounts to beat the doubling of CGT or cashing out pensions before the end of the 25 per cent allowance.

Sandpit · October 31

Dumbosaurus said:

RochdalePioneers said:
"Perhaps one da?y we will find out why some people are trying to manipulate the betting markets like this."

We know why: To create the narrative that the election was stolen. Musk is literally counting off the % figures on this market as Trump gets higher and higher. So if you live inside the MAGA bullshit bubble you are voting Trump, everyone is voting Trump all the polls and the betting markets show Trump winning bigly, and you're being fed bullshit about Dems trying to cheat.

If Harris wins, this market will be "proof" that Trump won and therefore that the election was stolen.
A reminder as well that polymarket settles where crypto bros want it to settle. The settlement mechanism is both theoretically ingenious and real world immensely flawed.

No way on earth would I have a significant short trump on polymarket long trump on betfair arb on into settlement.

It may be that taking these incentives into account polymarket is about right.

That’s a good point. It could be that there’s sufficient numbers of votes to declare the result of this market well in advance of a formal declaration of the result of the event in question. Once settled it’s totally and utterly final, with no-one to sue if you feel wronged.

WildernessPt2 · October 31

Scott_xP said:
Trump's entire life in a single image

It all fits into the “coming after me, because they want to come after you” narrative.

GIN1138 · October 31

Who knew two undecillion was a trillion times a trillion times a trillion or 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?

WildernessPt2 · October 31

MaxPB said:

eek said:

IanB2 said:

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?
If the budget unwravels in the media, it could well be when it dawns on commentators that a big slice of the extra funding for health, schools, councils and the rest will be eaten up by the government's own employers' NI increase. Indeed by my reckoning the extra NI for a typical local council's workforce will cost more than the 1.5% real increase in funding that Reeves threw them in yesterday's speech, assuming a pay rise in April that is near CPI.
The change in the starting point is going to consume that 1.5% by itself before anything else.
The NI rises will cost the NHS about £1.5bn per year to cover, the care sector won't be as large but it will be in the many hundreds of millions.

Has the mechanism where the public sector will be reimbursed being made public yet? Does it apply to local government? Councils put about 28% into the pension pot.

Sandpit · October 31

Foxy said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
Yes, my MiL was in a very nice care home and very well looked after for 18 months, but the fees left only £50 000 from the sale of her bungalow for Mrs Foxy and her sister.

Personally I thought that fine, as that's what her savings were for, to keep her comfortable and well fed in her dotage.

It is a bit of a lottery though. Not all of us get to keel over quickly and painlessly reaching for the ketchup as Alec Salmond did the other week.

Then imagine how situations such as that interact with the euthanasia assisted dying bill that is currently being discussed…

TimS · October 31

I see this morning's Telegraph hard luck story is a poor retired couple forced to go back to working full time and sell their boat after Labour's budget because their...*60* buy to let homes aren't enough to live off.

Good to see the Telegraph keeping up the good fight against pensioner poverty.

MattW · October 31

londonpubman said:

MattW said:

TimS said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
Yesterday went some way towards that. 20% IHT on business and agricultural property above the threshold.

Our regime is out of step with other developed European countries, which generally have broader bases and lower rates.
I think this is important; there is no reason why IHT should be restricted to such a tiny % of estates.

I think the inclusion of never-taxed left over parts of pension pots will be a change there, which is a start.

I'd predict that they will get onto the loopholes around lifetime gifts and similar in a future budget.

Can we expect more strategic reforms next year, perhaps? I'm not sure whether she will do the "Twice a Year Rishi" thing.
I think the intention is to have one fiscal event/budget a year. This is a good thing as two budgets/events created unnecessary instability/variation in the tax regime.

I'm inclined to agree with that, from what I have seen.

I think that the mix this time has been quite heavily on nailing those attacks which may have had substance, and walking a knife edge. It is mainly very tactical, not strategic; lots of retail politics. I'd prefer the Conservative attacks to have been simply ignored; over time they will become less irrelevant, not more - so important change will be more difficult, not less.

There are too many unnecessary hostages to fortune eg promising that ISA subscription levels will be maintained at current level for 5 years. And there are too many very expensive unnecessary things she left in place, such as maintaining the Energy Crisis temporary extra tax break on fuel duty, and a crying need to address VED for electric vehicles.

IIRC Bad Al reckons there are presentationally 18 months in an administration where major change can be started. If true, that only leaves on more opportunity.

Sandpit · October 31

After his chat with Trump, Joe Rogan’s next guests are Francis and Konstantin from Triggernometry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5_EdPRLHuE

There’s a rumour that JD Vance may also appear before the election, the Harris campaign has yet to agree but Rogan is keen to try and make it happen.

TimS · October 31

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.

IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.

GIN1138 · October 31

Morris_Dancer said:
Good morning, everyone.

It's interesting that Labour has so much bad news ahead of time rather than the usual good news leaking. Be interesting to see how this affects perception of the Budget over time.

I think the government has got people in such a downbeat mood that the perception of the budget will be a grim one, whatever happens.

Pulpstar · October 31

TimS said:
I see this morning's Telegraph hard luck story is a poor retired couple forced to go back to working full time and sell their boat after Labour's budget because their...*60* buy to let homes aren't enough to live off.

Good to see the Telegraph keeping up the good fight against pensioner poverty.

I don't think the budgets a good one but the UK boomer obsession with property is a bit crackers. Now farming - that's different, it's not a job it's a way of life but landlords of mahoosive numbers of properties what on earth are they thinking. Why not just sit back, relax, let capital grow in the stock-market and live off dividends.

TOPPING · October 31

algarkirk said:
A country bumpkin writes: This article contains a maximal saturation of great sounding terms that don't mean anything to us, even though we understand the effects of IHT changes on muck spreading farmers.

Glossary required.

Wash trading is when you buy and sell back or vice versa with no economic benefit. Haven't read the header (obvs) but not sure how this would affect the prices of anything as it is specifically designed not to create an economic position good or bad.

Here's an example

https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/fca-fines-and-prohibits-trader-market-abuse

BartholomewRoberts · October 31

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.

My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.

No more IHT.

GIN1138 · October 31

Pulpstar said:

TimS said:
I see this morning's Telegraph hard luck story is a poor retired couple forced to go back to working full time and sell their boat after Labour's budget because their...*60* buy to let homes aren't enough to live off.

Good to see the Telegraph keeping up the good fight against pensioner poverty.
I don't think the budgets a good one but the UK boomer obsession with property is a bit crackers. Now farming - that's different, it's not a job it's a way of life but landlords of mahoosive numbers of properties what on earth are they thinking. Why not just sit back, relax, let capital grow in the stock-market and live off dividends.

Is it just a "boomer" obsession?

The saying "An Englishmans home is his castle" goes back a long time... It was forever thus...

kjh · October 31

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.

Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.

I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.

MattW · October 31

..

TimS · October 31

BartholomewRoberts said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.

No more IHT.

You'll still get the cries of "double taxation". But there is a lot of logic in simply taxing people when they get money, regardless of where it comes from.

Pulpstar · October 31

GIN1138 said:

Pulpstar said:

TimS said:
I see this morning's Telegraph hard luck story is a poor retired couple forced to go back to working full time and sell their boat after Labour's budget because their...*60* buy to let homes aren't enough to live off.

Good to see the Telegraph keeping up the good fight against pensioner poverty.
I don't think the budgets a good one but the UK boomer obsession with property is a bit crackers. Now farming - that's different, it's not a job it's a way of life but landlords of mahoosive numbers of properties what on earth are they thinking. Why not just sit back, relax, let capital grow in the stock-market and live off dividends.
Is it just a "boomer" obsession?

The saying "An Englishmans home is his castle" goes back a long time... It was forever thus...

Yes, *his* home but not 60 other familys lol.

TheScreamingEagles · October 31

Sandpit said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.

Two questions there.

1. Titanic, on your phone?
2. 8am and your battery is nearly dead. Did you stay ‘out’ last night?

1) Yes, my phone is called Titanic, back in 2010 when my phone synced with my car it used to say ‘phone syncing’, so I renamed my phone Titanic so whenever it synced it would say ‘Titanic syncing’ which is amused me.

2) My new iPhone 16 Pro Max has a phenomenal battery, I can go two whole days on a full charge and I hate charging overnight so it was 18% last night when I went to bed.

wooliedyed · October 31

BartholomewRoberts said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.

No more IHT.

What's your limit on gifts? Or does everyone have to fill in a tax return every year? Ornaybe every time they get a credit in their bank account?

Stereodog · October 31

ajb said:

DavidL said:

I suspect his support would crater rapidly if he lost that sheen. Harris needs to get her supporters out to vote and apparently being a small bit behind works for that too.
But if the former is correct then wouldn't the Dems be better off if they weren't "a small bit behind"?

It depends whether his support actually craters on election day or whether people just stop admitting that they're going to vote for him like in 2016.

Pulpstar · October 31

kjh said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.

I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.

Here's a question - if ALL inheritance was taxed like that (Including farmland which would go way way beyond Labour's plans) then surely every single farmer would be forced to sell up (Let's pretend you can't get out of it via "trust") for the sake of argument.

What happens to the price of agricultural land ?

rottenborough · October 31

Telegraph taking it well this morning.

"This was the worst Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by an enormous margin."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/30/allister-heath-budget-reeves-end-of-britain/

wooliedyed · October 31

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.

No more IHT.
You'll still get the cries of "double taxation". But there is a lot of logic in simply taxing people when they get money, regardless of where it comes from.

Because it is. Easy enough to get around - buy items and pass them on.

Casino_Royale · October 31

Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.

This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.

That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.

TimS · October 31

kjh said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.

I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.

It'll trigger behavioural change though. People will take their pensions rather than keeping hold of them.
There's a lot to be said for encouraging older people to spend the money and assets they have. Ideally on having a good time rather than social care, but realistically both.

The retired are such a huge proportion of the population now that we rely heavily on them for consumer spending. That's the only way they pay meaningful tax - through VAT - while keeping the economy afloat.

The maths is brutal. You have an ever expanding dependent population with ever increasing health and social care needs, coupled with an ever-decreasing working age population that is only going to shrink further now birth rates have sunk so low (even with significant immigration). So unless the retired either keep working much longer or spend spend spend, the tax on working age people has to rise inexorably simply for public services to stand still.

Sandpit · October 31

DecrepiterJohnL said:
OT F1 fans might be interested in Marina Hyde's TRiE observation that the Formula 1 exhibition currently at the Excel Centre in that there London has attracted a lot of young women introduced to the sport by the Netflix series, Drive to Survive. Motor racing is no longer just for petrol heads, apparently.

Good to hear it’s getting good reviews.

I’d like to go, if only to see what’s left of Romain Grosjean’s very burned Haas car from Bahrain 2020.

Hopefully it does inspire a load of young girls to take up kart racing. Noisy, smelly and expensive to maintain, we need to ban horses.

Carnyx · October 31

Pulpstar said:

kjh said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.

I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
Here's a question - if ALL inheritance was taxed like that (Including farmland which would go way way beyond Labour's plans) then surely every single farmer would be forced to sell up (Let's pretend you can't get out of it via "trust") for the sake of argument.

What happens to the price of agricultural land ?

That's assuming all farmers are landowners. Very much not true. The right-wing argument fide HYufd passim is to bleat about owner occupier farmers. But the big landowners are also very much affected by this.

Casino_Royale · October 31

TheScreamingEagles said:
Not the headline/push notification Starmer/Reeves would have wanted.

That's already been the case in my firm.

Expected pay rises of 2% have been cancelled.

Carnyx · October 31

wooliedyed said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.

No more IHT.
You'll still get the cries of "double taxation". But there is a lot of logic in simply taxing people when they get money, regardless of where it comes from.
Because it is. Easy enough to get around - buy items and pass them on.

Er, but have you ever done an IHT form? Those 'items' do have to be itemised and valued. Or do I misunderstand?

And the loss of maybe half the value between new and secondhand market price isn't a great incentive, surely?

A_View_From_Cumbria5 · October 31

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.

The Inheritance Tax changes to farming were totally predicted aqnd the most stupid. They show a lack of any political nouse and won't produce any money. Even more so for small businesses.

However, it is now easy for Reform to promise to end IHT on estates of under £15M, and they will do that. Presumably the Conservatives will do the same. The question is will the LDs, probably not. Thus they will lose all the seats they gained and some more besides.

"She had to do something". Well, doing nothing would have been better than this, much better. So NO, she didn't have to do anything.

wooliedyed · October 31

Carnyx said:

wooliedyed said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
My solution fixes that, it should be abolished and inheritance should be taxed as income instead.

No more IHT.
You'll still get the cries of "double taxation". But there is a lot of logic in simply taxing people when they get money, regardless of where it comes from.
Because it is. Easy enough to get around - buy items and pass them on.
Er, but have you ever done an IHT form? Those 'items' do have to be itemised and valued. Or do I misunderstand?

And the loss of maybe half the value between new and secondhand market price isn't a great incentive, surely?

We are talking about replacing IHT with income tax on anything received at any time though, not the current IHT regime.

Sandpit · October 31

Pulpstar said:

kjh said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.

I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
Here's a question - if ALL inheritance was taxed like that (Including farmland which would go way way beyond Labour's plans) then surely every single farmer would be forced to sell up (Let's pretend you can't get out of it via "trust") for the sake of argument.

What happens to the price of agricultural land ?

If it was 10% per generation, say 25 years, then it should be easy enough to mortgage the land.

Maybe sell off an acre or two for housing every so often, if there’s some decent planning reform.

The problem with 20% or even 40% rates is that you can’t really do that, and then there is a forced sale of the land.

MattW · October 31

TimS said:
I see this morning's Telegraph hard luck story is a poor retired couple forced to go back to working full time and sell their boat after Labour's budget because their...*60* buy to let homes aren't enough to live off.

Good to see the Telegraph keeping up the good fight against pensioner poverty.

Can you give me a link to that. I'd say that if that is true then he's probably cocked up his property management or his tax.

But the Telegraph has been running a series of stories on this type of subject - some with justification to an extent, some not.

I can't find one involving selling a boat.

Taz · October 31

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.

I may be missing something with the bringing of DC pensions/SIPP's into IHT but these pensions are there to provide an income to people in retirement and not be a tax efficient vehicle to pass money down to their inheritors.

I cannot see how this is a bad thing.

Maybe I am missing something, as I say. Happy to be corrected.

I also agree with you on IHT. It is unearned and it reinforces privilege and wealth. It is anti meritocratic. My view may be different if I was likely to inherit a substantial sum,

Casino_Royale · October 31

Sean_F said:

MaxPB said:

IanB2 said:

Nigelb said:
On social care, it will likely be one of the sectors hardest hit by the NI and minimum wages hikes.
I'm guessing the small increase in funding in the budget just about covers this ?
If the budget unwravels in the media, it could well be when it dawns on commentators that a big slice of the extra funding for health, schools, councils and the rest will be eaten up by the government's own employers' NI increase. Indeed by my reckoning the extra NI for a typical local council's workforce will cost more than the 1.5% real increase in funding that Reeves threw them in yesterday's speech, assuming a pay rise in April that is near CPI.
I think Labour will have to implement pay freezes across big chunks of the public sector fir a few years to make the NI tax figures work out. I don't think they have the fortitude to see off the unions on it though.
I’d expect see further tax rises, to cover the extra costs imposed upon public sector pay budgets.

(1) They won't get £25bn (net) from raising employers NI to 15%
(2) They won't get anything like £9bn from putting VAT and business rates on private schools, which is just a fantasy
(3) All the money they put into the NHS will be soaked up by higher wages and prices and headcount, with no real shift in output
(4) The economy in general will grow more slowly; the £21bn planned for CCUS is pissing money up the wall - and a huge missed opportunity for UK Plc
(5) You can forget the income tax thresholds becoming unfrozen in 2028

I expect the UK to be in an even worse position by 2028-29 than if Sunak/Hunt had stayed in office, and I say that as someone who was never impressed by their aversion to capital investment.

noneoftheabove · October 31

Casino_Royale said:
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.

This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.

That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.

It may not be normal historically or internationally but it is a modern British value I applaud and one which makes me feel patriotic. Different strokes for different folks.

MaxPB · October 31

I've noticed, though not here, that there's a lot of delusional people who think that the two NI will be paid for by businesses who will take it out of their profit margins. I guess these will be the same people that blame their employers when wages are frozen for three years to recover the losses.

GIN1138 · October 31

Casino_Royale said:
Fundamentally, our highly westernised individualistic model means we expect people who need help and those who need care to be fully independent or cared for by paid others without any recourse to extended families or communities who'd do it essentially for free with a bit of aid and help.

This is not normal, throughout human history or in the rest of the world, where extended families care for their elderly parents and those with disabilities.

That doesn't bankrupt nations. And psychologically it's better for them too.

I was a carer for my mother in her last decade and especially through her final illness. It was my pleasure to do so... At the end (I mean in her final three months when she was really declining fast) we did have carers come in to do the things I couldn't (wash her, dress her, etc) but that only lasted three months before she died.

The toughest thing for the carer is what happens AFTER the person dies, IMO. Everything just stops but for the carer, who had been living on their wits for months of even years (and you do live on your wits, as caring for someone is such a responsibility, especially when they're terminally ill)

For a long time afterwards I was left with feelings of anxiety and that I should be doing *something* even though there was nothing to do... It took me a long time to get rid of that "knot" in my stomach and even now over two years on, I still question a lot of the decisions I took as the person responsible for her.

kjh · October 31

Pulpstar said:

kjh said:

TimS said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Sandpit said:

Eabhal said:

IanB2 said:
FPT

Dopermean said:

IanB2 said:

glw said:

rottenborough said:
£600m for social care.

£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.

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.
The political ‘wisdom’ is that there are hardly any votes in social care; surprising really, given the dramatic cost and effect on family finances when an elderly relative goes into care, as I am now dealing with. Ed Davey has gone a little way to proving this wisdom wrong; the LDs got a bit of traction for focusing on the issue during the GE and it was good to see Ed get a hat tip from the Budget speech. But Labour in particular always campaigns on the NHS (even in local elections) where it thinks the votes are, and has never made social care a priority. Streeting is clearly now fishing around for some way of offloading his promise of a resolution into some sort of cross-party long grass.
The problem iis the enormous cost, as May found out, any suggestion that the elderly should pitch in and share the risk of social care costs is political suicide. The only time a govt could do this is early in their term but Labour learnt a lesson when Cameron pulled out of cross party talks on a solution, choosing instead to use it for political point scoring.
Except that for many families, thats status quo. I've just this second sent another £6,000 over to the care home for my mother's next month, and we're selling her now vacant flat in order to cover future costs. Almost any change to the current arrangements would likely reduce our burden, and the Dilnot cap would have been most welcome, as we'll be up to it in about a year's time.
Similar situation in my family. Our inheritance from both sides has been wiped out by care costs; a result of brilliant efforts of the NHS to keep my grandparents alive.

It's a lottery and why, under the current system, inheritance tax feels fair to me. I'd rather it was upfront insurance premium that everyone paid though.
If they made inheritance tax 10% but with no exceptions, it would almost certainly raise more money than the current scheme full of a very expensive avoidance industry, that catches mostly the middle classes who happen to have a house in the South and some savings or pension - while the seriously wealthy pay little to nothing.
If it were up to me all inheritances would be taxed the same as income, with no exceptions.

Going to work to earn £50,000 shouldn't be taxed a single penny more than inheriting £50,000 that you haven't gone to work to earn.
IHT seems to evoke more emotion than any other tax, which is why there are so many reliefs. Politically extremely difficult.
Yep, although I completely disagree with @hyufd on IHT and I am more in line with @BartholomewRoberts there is no doubting @HYUFD views represent a huge constituency of voters and you have to respect that to some extent.

I do think the pension pot change is right as it was an anomaly, but you can't ignore that it will bring into IHT an awful lot of people who previously were nowhere near it.
Here's a question - if ALL inheritance was taxed like that (Including farmland which would go way way beyond Labour's plans) then surely every single farmer would be forced to sell up (Let's pretend you can't get out of it via "trust") for the sake of argument.

What happens to the price of agricultural land ?

I said 'more in line', that is I am happy with inheritance being taxed. I wouldn't move it to income tax, if for the obviously reason that it it isn't being spread. I certainly would make exceptions for such things as businesses that can't realise the tax without destroying the business. I was simply making the point that I agree with IHT in principle, but appreciate the issues it raises and gave the issue of the pension pot change which I completely agree with, but appreciate the impact.

In a nut shell - In my opinion an important tax that is morally correct and in most cases doesn't impact growth like NI. However I acknowledge that care is needed with regard to certain businesses in particularly farms and also acknowledge there is a constituency out there that has a moral objection to it.

wooliedyed · October 31

I actually have a hospital appointment this morning. What a budget!

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Categories

Could this explain the Betfair market? – politicalbetting.com

Comments