Regurgitating hatchet pieces by bitter opponents and has-beens not brave enough to voice them before his passing is despicable. Presumably these alleged incidents were known and identified to the massive police investigation leading up to the court case but not felt worthly of a separate charge, unlike the infamous 'hair pinging' or the 'push in the back as you're blocking the stair' episodes.
At the risk of reading too much into things, I'd say the following:
1. Her piece is short. That, together with the rushed Iowa poll, suggests that the Trump campaign has been panicked by the Selzer poll and is obviously scrambling;
2. By implication, that suggests that neither campaign has a clue what is actually going on in the individual states. If the GOP did, then they would have been picking up the warning signals from days ago rather than coming as a shock;
3. It also implies the GOP doesn't think their original strategy was a losing one (if they did, Haley's piece would have been longer, more structured and would have come earlier, plus they would have been pivoted);
That reads very much like the pleas of a hostage. Very much going through the motions from Haley.
On your point 2, I don’t think in the fog of war most campaigns have much idea of what is going on. They probably have been picking up signals from the battle ground but likely discounting it because it doesn’t fit their sense of the vibe.
Indeed, reads very much like the Trump camp rang and rang and rang again Haley and implored her to write something that would bring her largely educated and wealthy white female vote and Independent voter support back into the Trump camp.
Haley eventually grudgingly agreed and looks like something she rushed off in the bath.
First 2 lines hardly the most fulsome endorsement ever 'Millions of people love Donald Trump, and millions hate him. Each group will vote accordingly.'
Next few paras not much better
'But there are also millions whose views on Mr. Trump are mixed. They like much of what he did as president and agree with most of his policies. But they dislike his tone and can’t condone his excesses, such as his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021. This third group of Americans will determine whether the former president returns to the White House.
To that group, I’ll point out that Mr. Trump isn’t the only one on the ballot. This election isn’t a referendum on him. It’s a choice between him and Kamala Harris.
I don’t agree with Mr. Trump 100% of the time. But I do agree with him most of the time, and I disagree with Ms. Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call. Here are the facts most relevant to me.'
Of course if Trump and Vance lose Haley can say 'I told you so' and run again for the GOP nomination in 2028, whereas if Trump wins Vance is odds on to be GOP nominee next time. So not in her interests for Trump to do too well tomorrow, even if for party unity she has to be seen to give him token support
I suspect many of those she is asking to vote for Trump will have already voted early to get the deed done and moved on.
To a Harris Presidency.
I mean, asking the day before FFS...
I think the late announcement is entirely intentional. After all it's the very least she had to do...
So she did the very least that was required to ensure she can get on the ballot in 2028..
“Sal was regarded as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People Driving Change in the UK Through Inclusion by The Diversity & Power List in 2023. He is now available to hire for events related to DE&I, male allyship, fighting racial inequality and other related subjects.”
US election prediction: Harris 292 Trump 246. Dems House by 5-10 seats. GOP Senate 51-49.
IMHO it's 286-252 to Harris (Arizona and Nevada flip, but not Georgia or Pennsylvania) , and 52-48 Republican in the Senate. I agree the Democrats win back the House,
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
US election prediction: Harris 292 Trump 246. Dems House by 5-10 seats. GOP Senate 51-49.
IMHO it's 286-252 to Harris (Arizona and Nevada flip, but not Georgia or Pennsylvania) , and 52-48 Republican in the Senate. I agree the Democrats win back the House,
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yes, I know, and I’ve seen THAT video too
It was made worse by the fact that an hour before I saw one brave little octopus making a run for it. He was out of his tank and haring off down the street, literally heading for the sea (as my guide pointed out). Sadly his chances of making it were about 0.00004%
And then i had that dish
Ugh. UGH. It was genuinely upsetting and I deeply regret it and I have vowed never to eat octopus again. Enough
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yep - It would not surprise me if come the apocalypse all the world’s Octopuses got in a UFO and went back to their home planet.
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
Don't worry. Given and sniff of power the highly principled Lib Dems would abandon the farmers at the drop of a hat.
Not sure they would
Tim Farron is furious and Lib Dems have many rural constituencies
Tim Farron was never that good at economics - he studied Politics.
The reality is that it looks bad, isn't actually that bad and can probably be mitigated for about £500 a year maximum via some extra life assurance..
As Rishi discovered, when you are trying to win a general election being brilliant at economics but crap at politics is not much help.
Economics may help you be an effective Chancellor, knowledge of history and politics is more useful as PM and a party leader
Nice try. Rishi wasn't brilliant at economics, and he was one of the least effective Chancellors of recent times. He would have made an acceptable Cheif Sec of the Treasury but was disastrously overpromoted.
Nick Clegg's Lib Dems won more votes in 2010 than Rishi Sunak's Tories got in 2024.
The post Brexit Tories have become a strange clique. It's difficult to judge what they are anymore. Nowadays I picture them as the sort of people who would read and agree with the Daily Mail
Good morning
I doubt the conservative party really considers your views as you are not their target vote
As I said yesterday Kemi will seek to recover some votes from Reform and to attract the conservatives who either abstained or voted Labour at the GE
As has been said on Sky this morning Kemi is a straight talker and will upset her opponents, but straight talking is needed rather than gaining office by swearing no tax increases then imposing 40 billion of such increases as Reeves has just done
If you are agreeing with her then she is not doing her job
Straight talker? Do you agree with her that partygate was overblown and Boris was great?
I listened to her interview and she said FPN were wrong and were largely handed to staff and even some people walking in parks.
I did not hear her say Johnson was great, indeed she said she resigned over his stance on Pincher
Putting comments into context provides a different view
Bloody Times and their lies.
'Kemi Badenoch: Partygate was overblown and Boris Johnson was great'
I like this one: "Drug gangs ‘threaten to turn France into Mexicanised narco-state’"
And he main Times one I have seen this weekend is how OUTRAGEOUS it is that the Duchy of Cornwall are charging a rent to the NHS when the NHS use facilities that would normally have a rent charged for them. Apparently it's some sort of unethical Royal personal profiteering.
I wonder if this use of wax crayons will continue after Mr Murdoch joins the choir invisible.
Its clearly not an issue if the Royals earn money by renting out things. It IS an issue if the countries taxes are also being paid to people who don't actually need it. Let them live as normal folk do. Pay the King's expenses for his Royal engagements. Get a rich donor to pay for his suits (its all the rage now, I hear).
The royals get no taxpayer support other than for their security
Really? The sovereign grant in 2023 was 86.3 million. Thats a lot of security. I call bullshit.
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yep - It would not surprise me if come the apocalypse all the world’s Octopuses got in a UFO and went back to their home planet.
They can unscrew pickle jars better than most humans
I should have had the courage of my convictions last night. I wanted to save that octopus. I should have done so. I should have picked him up, paid off the owner, taken him to the water and let him go
I didn’t and instead I got a hideous soju hangover and a sense of profound moral unease, serve me right
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
Nick Clegg's Lib Dems won more votes in 2010 than Rishi Sunak's Tories got in 2024.
The post Brexit Tories have become a strange clique. It's difficult to judge what they are anymore. Nowadays I picture them as the sort of people who would read and agree with the Daily Mail
Good morning
I doubt the conservative party really considers your views as you are not their target vote
As I said yesterday Kemi will seek to recover some votes from Reform and to attract the conservatives who either abstained or voted Labour at the GE
As has been said on Sky this morning Kemi is a straight talker and will upset her opponents, but straight talking is needed rather than gaining office by swearing no tax increases then imposing 40 billion of such increases as Reeves has just done
If you are agreeing with her then she is not doing her job
Straight talker? Do you agree with her that partygate was overblown and Boris was great?
I listened to her interview and she said FPN were wrong and were largely handed to staff and even some people walking in parks.
I did not hear her say Johnson was great, indeed she said she resigned over his stance on Pincher
Putting comments into context provides a different view
Bloody Times and their lies.
'Kemi Badenoch: Partygate was overblown and Boris Johnson was great'
I like this one: "Drug gangs ‘threaten to turn France into Mexicanised narco-state’"
And he main Times one I have seen this weekend is how OUTRAGEOUS it is that the Duchy of Cornwall are charging a rent to the NHS when the NHS use facilities that would normally have a rent charged for them. Apparently it's some sort of unethical Royal personal profiteering.
I wonder if this use of wax crayons will continue after Mr Murdoch joins the choir invisible.
Its clearly not an issue if the Royals earn money by renting out things. It IS an issue if the countries taxes are also being paid to people who don't actually need it. Let them live as normal folk do. Pay the King's expenses for his Royal engagements. Get a rich donor to pay for his suits (its all the rage now, I hear).
The royals get no taxpayer support other than for their security
Really? The sovereign grant in 2023 was 86.3 million. Thats a lot of security. I call bullshit.
Paid for by profits of crown estate and duchies not taxpayers
I think it'll be Harris, but a Trump win would be no surprise. A landslide either way wouldn't shock me either.
2020 was convinced it would be Biden, effective margin was smaller than I thought it would be.
2016 thought Hillary would do it. Obviously got turned over.
I think Harris will win. I also think that if there is an outcome that is out of line with current anticipation it’s more likely to favour Harris than Trump. The Selzer poll certainly gives an interesting case for something unusual going on. Even if that poll is over counting certain voters you can definitely see it suggesting a bit more lopsided a result than currently looks likely.
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yes, I know, and I’ve seen THAT video too
It was made worse by the fact that an hour before I saw one brave little octopus making a run for it. He was out of his tank and haring off down the street, literally heading for the sea (as my guide pointed out). Sadly his chances of making it were about 0.00004%
And then i had that dish
Ugh. UGH. It was genuinely upsetting and I deeply regret it and I have vowed never to eat octopus again. Enough
Yes, I stopped eating octopus quite a few years back for much the same reason. They pull the same stunt in the Seoul food market tours, too. The drinking games are fun, though.
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
Nick Clegg's Lib Dems won more votes in 2010 than Rishi Sunak's Tories got in 2024.
The post Brexit Tories have become a strange clique. It's difficult to judge what they are anymore. Nowadays I picture them as the sort of people who would read and agree with the Daily Mail
Good morning
I doubt the conservative party really considers your views as you are not their target vote
As I said yesterday Kemi will seek to recover some votes from Reform and to attract the conservatives who either abstained or voted Labour at the GE
As has been said on Sky this morning Kemi is a straight talker and will upset her opponents, but straight talking is needed rather than gaining office by swearing no tax increases then imposing 40 billion of such increases as Reeves has just done
If you are agreeing with her then she is not doing her job
Straight talker? Do you agree with her that partygate was overblown and Boris was great?
I listened to her interview and she said FPN were wrong and were largely handed to staff and even some people walking in parks.
I did not hear her say Johnson was great, indeed she said she resigned over his stance on Pincher
Putting comments into context provides a different view
Bloody Times and their lies.
'Kemi Badenoch: Partygate was overblown and Boris Johnson was great'
I like this one: "Drug gangs ‘threaten to turn France into Mexicanised narco-state’"
And he main Times one I have seen this weekend is how OUTRAGEOUS it is that the Duchy of Cornwall are charging a rent to the NHS when the NHS use facilities that would normally have a rent charged for them. Apparently it's some sort of unethical Royal personal profiteering.
I wonder if this use of wax crayons will continue after Mr Murdoch joins the choir invisible.
Its clearly not an issue if the Royals earn money by renting out things. It IS an issue if the countries taxes are also being paid to people who don't actually need it. Let them live as normal folk do. Pay the King's expenses for his Royal engagements. Get a rich donor to pay for his suits (its all the rage now, I hear).
The royals get no taxpayer support other than for their security
Really? The sovereign grant in 2023 was 86.3 million. Thats a lot of security. I call bullshit.
Paid for by profits of crown estate and duchies not taxpayers
The profits from the crown estate rightfully belong to the taxpayers as the sovereign surrendered them in exchange for the sovereign grant.
The decision by Osborne to fix the sovereign grant to a percentage of crown estate profits was one of the most generous and pro-Royal Family acts by a politician for as long as I can remember.
I think Harris will win and have bet accordingly. My final prediction is 308 to 230, with Harris winning all the swing states except Arizona, and getting much closer than expected to winning some of Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Florida and Maine CD2.
You will feel a bit of a twit when Jill Stein wins on Tuesday, won't you !!!!
You joke, of course, but I do wonder how much of the Muslim vote Ms Stein might pull away from the Democrats. There must be some out there who won't be able to bring themselves to vote for Harris even if it means letting Trump in.
Nick Clegg's Lib Dems won more votes in 2010 than Rishi Sunak's Tories got in 2024.
The post Brexit Tories have become a strange clique. It's difficult to judge what they are anymore. Nowadays I picture them as the sort of people who would read and agree with the Daily Mail
Good morning
I doubt the conservative party really considers your views as you are not their target vote
As I said yesterday Kemi will seek to recover some votes from Reform and to attract the conservatives who either abstained or voted Labour at the GE
As has been said on Sky this morning Kemi is a straight talker and will upset her opponents, but straight talking is needed rather than gaining office by swearing no tax increases then imposing 40 billion of such increases as Reeves has just done
If you are agreeing with her then she is not doing her job
Straight talker? Do you agree with her that partygate was overblown and Boris was great?
I listened to her interview and she said FPN were wrong and were largely handed to staff and even some people walking in parks.
I did not hear her say Johnson was great, indeed she said she resigned over his stance on Pincher
Putting comments into context provides a different view
Bloody Times and their lies.
'Kemi Badenoch: Partygate was overblown and Boris Johnson was great'
I like this one: "Drug gangs ‘threaten to turn France into Mexicanised narco-state’"
And he main Times one I have seen this weekend is how OUTRAGEOUS it is that the Duchy of Cornwall are charging a rent to the NHS when the NHS use facilities that would normally have a rent charged for them. Apparently it's some sort of unethical Royal personal profiteering.
I wonder if this use of wax crayons will continue after Mr Murdoch joins the choir invisible.
Its clearly not an issue if the Royals earn money by renting out things. It IS an issue if the countries taxes are also being paid to people who don't actually need it. Let them live as normal folk do. Pay the King's expenses for his Royal engagements. Get a rich donor to pay for his suits (its all the rage now, I hear).
The royals get no taxpayer support other than for their security
Really? The sovereign grant in 2023 was 86.3 million. Thats a lot of security. I call bullshit.
Paid for by profits of crown estate and duchies not taxpayers
The profits from the crown estate rightfully belong to the taxpayers as the sovereign surrendered them in exchange for the sovereign grant.
The decision by Osborne to fix the sovereign grant to a percentage of crown estate profits was one of the most generous and pro-Royal Family acts by a politician for as long as I can remember.
No they don't, the Crown Estate belongs to the sovereign as corporation sole.
Even if the royals still get more of its profits, taxpayers aren't paying a penny more in taxes for them
The 95th Boat Race took place on 26 March 1949. The race…. was notable as the commentator for the BBC, John Snagge announced "I can't see who's in the lead, but it's either Oxford or Cambridge."
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
The Selzer Iowa poll was a political shockwave. What if I told you there was a poll in neighboring Kansas that shows the same dynamic as Iowa? It's the Kansas Speaks poll which had Trump only +5 in a state he won +14 in 2020
Here's the kicker for the Kansas Speaks poll. Harris' surprising strength comes from older people with a large gender gap. The same dynamic as Selzer's poll
I think Harris will win and have bet accordingly. My final prediction is 308 to 230, with Harris winning all the swing states except Arizona, and getting much closer than expected to winning some of Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Florida and Maine CD2.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
They may be small states, but if that dynamic is happening in Iowa and Kansas, it’s also happening throughout that red swath of states in the middle and south of the USA.
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yes, I know, and I’ve seen THAT video too
It was made worse by the fact that an hour before I saw one brave little octopus making a run for it. He was out of his tank and haring off down the street, literally heading for the sea (as my guide pointed out). Sadly his chances of making it were about 0.00004%
And then i had that dish
Ugh. UGH. It was genuinely upsetting and I deeply regret it and I have vowed never to eat octopus again. Enough
Yes, I stopped eating octopus quite a few years back for much the same reason. They pull the same stunt in the Seoul food market tours, too. The drinking games are fun, though.
Yeah I had a laugh but woke up feeling shit - and guilty
I get increasingly uneasy about meat-eating in general. Trouble is I love it
But the least I can do is be choosier about what meat I eat and octopi just got struck from the menu
BTW if you liked Korea you MUST go to Japan. i have decided that Japan is the refined, purified version of Korea
If Korea is molasses, Japan is crystalline sugar; if Korea is opium, Japan is white heroin
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
Remember both Hillary and Biden were more centrist than Harris is, so you would expect some Independents and moderates nationally to switch to Trump for the first time against her even if they voted for Hillary and Biden before. Trump might win Orange County, California for example or some New York outer wealthy suburbs he lost before.
However states like Iowa prefer more liberal Democrats, they voted for Obama over Hillary in 2008 and even for Dukakis and Gore for instance but not for Hillary or Biden so Harris and Walz could pick up some surprise states like that. Walz will also go down better in rural Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania than Hillary and Kaine did but probably less well than Hillary in urban California or New York city
I think it'll be Harris, but a Trump win would be no surprise. A landslide either way wouldn't shock me either.
2020 was convinced it would be Biden, effective margin was smaller than I thought it would be.
2016 thought Hillary would do it. Obviously got turned over.
I think Harris will win. I also think that if there is an outcome that is out of line with current anticipation it’s more likely to favour Harris than Trump. The Selzer poll certainly gives an interesting case for something unusual going on. Even if that poll is over counting certain voters you can definitely see it suggesting a bit more lopsided a result than currently looks likely.
Brian Stelter @brianstelter · 25m Donald Trump has been the biggest political story of the past ten years. A media fixation. A divisive force. And today is the last day he will ever campaign for president.
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
They may be small states, but if that dynamic is happening in Iowa and Kansas, it’s also happening throughout that red swath of states in the middle and south of the USA.
Not in the south which is more anti abortion and evangelical and has more black men who Trump has made inroads with. Trump almost certainly wins Georgia for example this time and that is a bigger state with more voters than Iowa and Kansas combined
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
In any case, I'd beware of extrapolating from small data sets.
Laura Trott has been appointed Shadow Education Secretary and Neil O’Brien has been appointed Shadow Minister of State for Education. Both will be on the opposition front bench for Education oral questions this afternoon.
Knowing your prediliction for tragedy and all things dark, I'm guessing it's a massacre site of the Jeju uprising?
No, it’s dark but with a hopeful edge
As has been pointed out below, it is the famous “40 steps” of Busan. At the worst point of the Korean War Busan was the only bit of Korea not overrun by the commies. So it was full of refugees and war orphans and the like (the war still shapes Busan today). the most abject or desperate would gather on those steps hoping to spot other family members lost in the chaos of the times, but all coalescing there, by those steps
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
It will stay like the WFA cut as long as Labour has a majority government.
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
In any case, I'd beware of extrapolating from small data sets.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
It will stay like the WFA cut as long as Labour has a majority government.
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
Hardly. There are loads of examples from history of things that oppositions opposed at the time but left in place once they were next in government.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
It will stay like the WFA cut as long as Labour has a majority government.
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
I doubt that in 4 years time either the WFA, IHT exemption or VAT on private education will be things that any of those parties care about. There will be more recent issues with which to attract voters..
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
In any case, I'd beware of extrapolating from small data sets.
Harris takes WI, MI, PA, NC and GA Trump takes NV and AZ.
Some further thoughts:
- the rust belt will end up not being particularly close. Harris takes each of WI, MI and PA by a few points and clear margins. - IA will stay with Trump, but only by 1-2 points. FL will also be closer than anticipated, with a similar margin. Conversely, TX will do its usual TX thing and be very comfortable GOP. - The closest states will be NV and GA. Both will come down to very small margins (potentially hundreds of votes) so we won’t know the winner for ages, but it won’t matter because neither will be tipping point. - Harris will have a clear lead in popular vote. 3-4 points. - GOP will win the Senate 51/2-49/8. Democrats will gain the House by a small margin. - Lots of commentators will tell us over the coming days that the result was obvious now that we have it.
(Please note that I called the Labour seat total within 3 seats in 2024, and the Tory seat total within 2. Does that mean anything? Nope. But if I get this one right too I will be making a big deal of it!)
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
It will stay like the WFA cut as long as Labour has a majority government.
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
I doubt that in 4 years time either the WFA, IHT exemption or VAT on private education will be things that any of those parties care about. There will be more recent issues with which to attract voters..
The ever escalating US trade wars? Russias invasion of Germany? The 2 year long droughts from climate change? Starmer getting his tickets to Arsenal upgraded?
Knowing your prediliction for tragedy and all things dark, I'm guessing it's a massacre site of the Jeju uprising?
No, it’s dark but with a hopeful edge
As has been pointed out below, it is the famous “40 steps” of Busan. At the worst point of the Korean War Busan was the only bit of Korea not overrun by the commies. So it was full of refugees and war orphans and the like (the war still shapes Busan today). the most abject or desperate would gather on those steps hoping to spot other family members lost in the chaos of the times, but all coalescing there, by those steps
I never got what was with the accordion player, though ? It's not even a popular instrument in Korea.
Harris takes WI, MI, PA, NC and GA Trump takes NV and AZ.
Some further thoughts:
- the rust belt will end up not being particularly close. Harris takes each of WI, MI and PA by a few points and clear margins. - IA will stay with Trump, but only by 1-2 points. FL will also be closer than anticipated, with a similar margin. Conversely, TX will do its usual TX thing and be very comfortable GOP. - The closest states will be NV and GA. Both will come down to very small margins (potentially hundreds of votes) so we won’t know the winner for ages, but it won’t matter because neither will be tipping point. - Harris will have a clear lead in popular vote. 3-4 points. - GOP will win the Senate 51/2-49/8. Democrats will gain the House by a small margin. - Lots of commentators will tell us over the coming days that the result was obvious now that we have it.
(Please note that I called the Labour seat total within 3 seats in 2024, and the Tory seat total within 2. Does that mean anything? Nope. But if I get this one right too I will be making a big deal of it!)
That sounds about right to me. Well done on your 2024 GE predix
To my mind the best PB prognosticator - by a distance - is @Andy_JS. He is genuinely gifted
I don't know the significance of an accordianist's statue in Tokyo.
I'm inclined to wonder whether a Cuban musician every toured Japan 70 years ago to kick it all off.
The statute is stylish, like Eric Morecambe in Blackpool, or various "sit next to this" type statues in London. The first one of these I knew was in Beeston, in Nottingham, back in the 1980s. It is still there.
It’s a monument in Busan (at one point the only bit of Korea still held by the democrats/Americans/west) to all the refugees from elsewhere in Korea, during the Korean War, who gathered on those steps hoping to see lost family members in the sea of forlorn faces below
It is really quite moving. Busan is a cool city. Much preferred it to Seoul
The demographic crisis is way more pronounced there, though.
It is pronounced everywhere, ESPECIALLY on Jeju
I was so struck by the absence of children on Jeju, despite its large population (600,000) I did some Googling
The median age of Jeju is 58
FIFTY FUCKING EIGHT
The youngest you can feel outside an old people's home !
Knowing your prediliction for tragedy and all things dark, I'm guessing it's a massacre site of the Jeju uprising?
No, it’s dark but with a hopeful edge
As has been pointed out below, it is the famous “40 steps” of Busan. At the worst point of the Korean War Busan was the only bit of Korea not overrun by the commies. So it was full of refugees and war orphans and the like (the war still shapes Busan today). the most abject or desperate would gather on those steps hoping to spot other family members lost in the chaos of the times, but all coalescing there, by those steps
If there were bars around there 72 years ago I'm sure my dad would have walked those steps. I believe Busan was the transit point for leave in Japan during the Korean War which was a desirable R&R destination.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
Harris takes WI, MI, PA, NC and GA Trump takes NV and AZ.
Some further thoughts:
- the rust belt will end up not being particularly close. Harris takes each of WI, MI and PA by a few points and clear margins. - IA will stay with Trump, but only by 1-2 points. FL will also be closer than anticipated, with a similar margin. Conversely, TX will do its usual TX thing and be very comfortable GOP. - The closest states will be NV and GA. Both will come down to very small margins (potentially hundreds of votes) so we won’t know the winner for ages, but it won’t matter because neither will be tipping point. - Harris will have a clear lead in popular vote. 3-4 points. - GOP will win the Senate 51/2-49/8. Democrats will gain the House by a small margin. - Lots of commentators will tell us over the coming days that the result was obvious now that we have it.
(Please note that I called the Labour seat total within 3 seats in 2024, and the Tory seat total within 2. Does that mean anything? Nope. But if I get this one right too I will be making a big deal of it!)
That sounds about right to me. Well done on your 2024 GE predix
To my mind the best PB prognosticator - by a distance - is @Andy_JS. He is genuinely gifted
What is he predicting?!
I'm in the middle of doing my prediction spreadsheet at the moment. Leaving it the last day or so seems to work quite well.
Knowing your prediliction for tragedy and all things dark, I'm guessing it's a massacre site of the Jeju uprising?
No, it’s dark but with a hopeful edge
As has been pointed out below, it is the famous “40 steps” of Busan. At the worst point of the Korean War Busan was the only bit of Korea not overrun by the commies. So it was full of refugees and war orphans and the like (the war still shapes Busan today). the most abject or desperate would gather on those steps hoping to spot other family members lost in the chaos of the times, but all coalescing there, by those steps
If there were bars around there 72 years ago I'm sure my dad would have walked those steps. I believe Busan was the transit point for leave in Japan during the Korean War which was a desirable R&R destination.
Yes highly likely
You can still find the streets frequented by the US, UK, Turkish troops etc, and they are still somewhat seedy and red lighty, not that I’m alleging anything against your old man!
But yeah for sure he’d have passed through Busan and known those steps and drank around that area. Busan is cool. Like a kind of Korean San Francisco (without the Fent and the homeless)
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yes, I know, and I’ve seen THAT video too
It was made worse by the fact that an hour before I saw one brave little octopus making a run for it. He was out of his tank and haring off down the street, literally heading for the sea (as my guide pointed out). Sadly his chances of making it were about 0.00004%
And then i had that dish
Ugh. UGH. It was genuinely upsetting and I deeply regret it and I have vowed never to eat octopus again. Enough
Yes, I stopped eating octopus quite a few years back for much the same reason. They pull the same stunt in the Seoul food market tours, too. The drinking games are fun, though.
Yeah I had a laugh but woke up feeling shit - and guilty
I get increasingly uneasy about meat-eating in general. Trouble is I love it
But the least I can do is be choosier about what meat I eat and octopi just got struck from the menu
BTW if you liked Korea you MUST go to Japan. i have decided that Japan is the refined, purified version of Korea
If Korea is molasses, Japan is crystalline sugar; if Korea is opium, Japan is white heroin
Welcome back. I also removed Octopus from my eating choices a year ago - absolutely love it but they are clearly intelligent aliens so gave them up.
Would love a perfect lab grown pork/bacon as I love pigs and feel guilty about eating them as they are intelligent.
Not so fussed about cows and sheep - they are really stupid so deserve it. The brainy ones learned to make great milk and amazing wool - the meat ones, idiots.
There are problems with using the House popular vote. It does not include DC. More important, especially in recent years, not all seats are contested by both parties. It is possible to think of adjustments that would reduce both problems, but I haven't seen them done. Even in its flawed state, the total House vote is a better measure of party strength than presidential wins.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
It will stay like the WFA cut as long as Labour has a majority government.
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
I doubt that in 4 years time either the WFA, IHT exemption or VAT on private education will be things that any of those parties care about. There will be more recent issues with which to attract voters..
The ever escalating US trade wars? Russias invasion of Germany? The 2 year long droughts from climate change? Starmer getting his tickets to Arsenal upgraded?
Doubt the UK will get a drought, warmer maritime climate means we'll get more rain.
Apparently the funders (like British American Tobacco) of Tufton Street think tanks are also multi million dollar doners to the Trump campaign. Although to be fair BAT did also donate $900 to the Harris campaign.
None of these polls are worth engaging with. They are all rattling around "Who fucking knows?"
The stats on herding were pretty damning. The polls aren't being carried out and released in a non biased manner.
To unpick that would be a huge effort, if even possible from publicly released data.
As with a lot of US politics, their processes are way behind other countries.
It’s mad, we are 24h from Election Day and we have a whole load of nothing from all the pollsters.
Good luck to all those with serious money on the outcome, which could be anything from 330 EC votes one way, to 330 the other way!!
There's something that just doesn't smell right about all this. I cannot believe that so many states would be this close. It seems very unlikely.
Someone surely knows. Are they frit of saying anything, or quietly making money?
There are a few things going:
Opinion polling is really hard when it is this close and the electorate is unstable - Trump brings into play lots of usual non voters - both for and against. So whilst the relative popularity is unusually stable compared to a generation ago, accurately predicting which of them will vote this time is really hard and guessy.
Pollsters are herding - presumably by selective publishing and/or adjustments post the result coming in
Betting markets are dominated by mega (maga?) money from a handful of billionaires, possibly seeking to manipulate the market, but definitely significantly moving the market.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
It will stay like the WFA cut as long as Labour has a majority government.
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
I doubt that in 4 years time either the WFA, IHT exemption or VAT on private education will be things that any of those parties care about. There will be more recent issues with which to attract voters..
The ever escalating US trade wars? Russias invasion of Germany? The 2 year long droughts from climate change? Starmer getting his tickets to Arsenal upgraded?
Doubt the UK will get a drought, warmer maritime climate means we'll get more rain.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
It will stay like the WFA cut as long as Labour has a majority government.
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
I doubt that in 4 years time either the WFA, IHT exemption or VAT on private education will be things that any of those parties care about. There will be more recent issues with which to attract voters..
I could see the Tories proposing to raise the IHT agricultural threshold in 5 years time, but don't think they would abolish it completely. Surely one of Reeves key motivation for this was to control outside investors using land purchase as a tax avoidance scheme.
As a policy this won't be the biggest money spinner, there are methods round it available for most family farms who wish to keep farming, 7 year rule being the main one
Harris takes WI, MI, PA, NC and GA Trump takes NV and AZ.
Some further thoughts:
- the rust belt will end up not being particularly close. Harris takes each of WI, MI and PA by a few points and clear margins. - IA will stay with Trump, but only by 1-2 points. FL will also be closer than anticipated, with a similar margin. Conversely, TX will do its usual TX thing and be very comfortable GOP. - The closest states will be NV and GA. Both will come down to very small margins (potentially hundreds of votes) so we won’t know the winner for ages, but it won’t matter because neither will be tipping point. - Harris will have a clear lead in popular vote. 3-4 points. - GOP will win the Senate 51/2-49/8. Democrats will gain the House by a small margin. - Lots of commentators will tell us over the coming days that the result was obvious now that we have it.
(Please note that I called the Labour seat total within 3 seats in 2024, and the Tory seat total within 2. Does that mean anything? Nope. But if I get this one right too I will be making a big deal of it!)
That sounds about right to me. Well done on your 2024 GE predix
To my mind the best PB prognosticator - by a distance - is @Andy_JS. He is genuinely gifted
What is he predicting?!
Thanks (I didn’t post the LD and SNP figures because they were not as good!)
Knowing your prediliction for tragedy and all things dark, I'm guessing it's a massacre site of the Jeju uprising?
No, it’s dark but with a hopeful edge
As has been pointed out below, it is the famous “40 steps” of Busan. At the worst point of the Korean War Busan was the only bit of Korea not overrun by the commies. So it was full of refugees and war orphans and the like (the war still shapes Busan today). the most abject or desperate would gather on those steps hoping to spot other family members lost in the chaos of the times, but all coalescing there, by those steps
If there were bars around there 72 years ago I'm sure my dad would have walked those steps. I believe Busan was the transit point for leave in Japan during the Korean War which was a desirable R&R destination.
Yes highly likely
You can still find the streets frequented by the US, UK, Turkish troops etc, and they are still somewhat seedy and red lighty, not that I’m alleging anything against your old man!
But yeah for sure he’d have passed through Busan and known those steps and drank around that area. Busan is cool. Like a kind of Korean San Francisco (without the Fent and the homeless)
Tbf to my old pa he was much keener on a drink and a fight than fleshly delights.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
Well Trump getting the most votes while Harris wins the EC isn't that likely but a 2.5% chance seems reasonably likely.
My problem is that if Trump wins the popular vote he's going to be complaining forever that he only lost because of dodgy voting elsewhere where things are close.
So for may sanity I hope for a Harris win on both popular votes and in the Electoral College.
If the Selzer and Kansas polls are correct in the slightest, showing huge swings in deep red states, the Trump loss but PV win seems the least likely scenario.
They are small states. California and New York may look quite different. For one thing, women there are less likely to think there is an imminent risk to losing abortion rights.
They may be small states, but if that dynamic is happening in Iowa and Kansas, it’s also happening throughout that red swath of states in the middle and south of the USA.
Not in the south which is more anti abortion and evangelical and has more black men who Trump has made inroads with. Trump almost certainly wins Georgia for example this time and that is a bigger state with more voters than Iowa and Kansas combined
I don't know. The analysis of the early voting data in Georgia looks pretty positive for Harris.
In 2020 my American mother-in-law said that, if Trump lost in 2020 he would be finished, because Americans don't like a loser.
It's looked for a long time as though she was wrong, because Trump managed to persuade enough people that he didn't lose, and so he wasn't a loser. But, perhaps, there are just enough people who didn't buy that lie that he will be decisively defeated.
If Harris carries all the Biden states, and adds those that would be won on a 4.5% swing, then she'd win the Electoral College by 413 to 125.
If the majority of polls have been systematically wrong then I think it's possible we could be missing something dramatic like that. Lots of things are possible.
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yes, I know, and I’ve seen THAT video too
It was made worse by the fact that an hour before I saw one brave little octopus making a run for it. He was out of his tank and haring off down the street, literally heading for the sea (as my guide pointed out). Sadly his chances of making it were about 0.00004%
And then i had that dish
Ugh. UGH. It was genuinely upsetting and I deeply regret it and I have vowed never to eat octopus again. Enough
Yes, I stopped eating octopus quite a few years back for much the same reason. They pull the same stunt in the Seoul food market tours, too. The drinking games are fun, though.
Yeah I had a laugh but woke up feeling shit - and guilty
I get increasingly uneasy about meat-eating in general. Trouble is I love it
But the least I can do is be choosier about what meat I eat and octopi just got struck from the menu
BTW if you liked Korea you MUST go to Japan. i have decided that Japan is the refined, purified version of Korea
If Korea is molasses, Japan is crystalline sugar; if Korea is opium, Japan is white heroin
Welcome back. I also removed Octopus from my eating choices a year ago - absolutely love it but they are clearly intelligent aliens so gave them up.
Would love a perfect lab grown pork/bacon as I love pigs and feel guilty about eating them as they are intelligent.
Not so fussed about cows and sheep - they are really stupid so deserve it. The brainy ones learned to make great milk and amazing wool - the meat ones, idiots.
I find dairy farming the saddest, as it’s a form of exhausting lifelong slavery at the end of which you go off for the chop and get turned into pet food. But I do like cheese.
First big split between the LDs and Labour since Corbyn. The LDs are now calling Reeves' placing a 20% inheritance tax on agricultural estates worth over £1 million a 'tractor tax.'
Could be important as some of the latest polls give a hung parliament with Labour needing LD support to stay in office.
Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ rural affairs spokesman, said: “This claim just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Rachel Reeves must be living in cloud cuckoo land. It just shows this Labour Government doesn’t understand rural communities. What we cannot afford is to drive farmers out of business and undermine the country’s food security.”
It can't be beyond the wit of man to design a IHT system which allows a genuine farmer who has worked the land all their life to hand onto children to farm in their turn.
Maybe a 20 year rule? You have to have lived on and farmed the land for twenty years before handing on. Stops the City slickers buying land to hold for a couple of years for tax reasons?
I was talking over the weekend to a rural solicitor who deals in all this all day every day. Conclusions: a) It kicks in in 2026 so there is time to plan b) The 7 year rule still applies. There will be more use of this, with 97 year olds clinging on to ownership to the exclusion of the next 2 generations becoming less common c) The extra million (additional to each individual's usual IHT reliefs) applies to ownership; each owner gets the extra million. Ownership can be split vertically and horizontally across generations. d) As usual ignore everything farmers (and the compliant media) say and watch carefully what they do.
He expects to be busy. Rural accountants and lawyers will be doing OK. He expects the HMRC to get remarkably little from this source.
Good summary. The key thing here is the lead in time of nearly 18 months, lawyers and agents will be in high demand for the foreseeable.
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
I don't think she's finished with IHT and related themes. Lifetime Gifts still need to be reformed, as do trusts and other bits and pieces.
And considerably more revenue is required to address some of the big things that the last Govt ran away from or promised and left unfunded even in prospect, such as social care, public realm, policing, defence, local Government and others.
I think there is one, or perhaps two, budgets still to go where significant changes are possible that will have faded from memory by the next election.
Knowing your prediliction for tragedy and all things dark, I'm guessing it's a massacre site of the Jeju uprising?
No, it’s dark but with a hopeful edge
As has been pointed out below, it is the famous “40 steps” of Busan. At the worst point of the Korean War Busan was the only bit of Korea not overrun by the commies. So it was full of refugees and war orphans and the like (the war still shapes Busan today). the most abject or desperate would gather on those steps hoping to spot other family members lost in the chaos of the times, but all coalescing there, by those steps
If there were bars around there 72 years ago I'm sure my dad would have walked those steps. I believe Busan was the transit point for leave in Japan during the Korean War which was a desirable R&R destination.
Yes highly likely
You can still find the streets frequented by the US, UK, Turkish troops etc, and they are still somewhat seedy and red lighty, not that I’m alleging anything against your old man!
But yeah for sure he’d have passed through Busan and known those steps and drank around that area. Busan is cool. Like a kind of Korean San Francisco (without the Fent and the homeless)
Tbf to my old pa he was much keener on a drink and a fight than fleshly delights.
Not hard to find in Busan during the war… apparently the military police were very busy
One of the weird things about Busan (near those steps) is that the boozy, whorey, dodgy streets are STILL like that, but the Americans have been replaced by…. Russians. Yes, I know. Quite unexpected and doesn’t really make sense, but it is true
The Russian fishing fleet has a big port near Busan and all the shady Russian “biznismen” congregate in that same area, you see lots of signs in Cyrillic
You should surely have a good chance at solving that quiz
You took the Train to Busan ?
Btw, did you go for the full makgeolli hangover ?
Didn’t like makgeolli so I swerved that…. But I liked soju all too much. They took me on a food tour of Busan last night, the fish market and everything. Some ace food and some not so ace, and LOTS of soju, that stuff slips down far too easily
Fuck me the hangover
A soju hangover is gentle in comparison. Magkeolli has a lot less alcohol, but drink enough, and it is virtually poisonous.
Jeez that sounds bad. Because a soju hangover is frigging horrible. Luckily I detested makgeolli
Also last night, and for the first time in my life, I felt great moral distress eating an exotic foodstuff. We were all drunk and the guide persuaded me to try “living octopus”
OMFG. I thought they were joking. they weren’t joking. Horrific: and not even “tasty”
You probably know this, but the octopus is a surprisingly intelligent creature. Intelligence has evolved precisely twice on earth as we understand it: once in vertebrates, and once in the family which encompasses octopus, cuttlefish and squid. Octopus intelligence is up at mammal level. As we understand it. Though it is a peculiar sort of intelligence, and (and I am paraphrasing the truth wildly here) to some extent operated by committee rather than being a dictatorship of one central brain. Each limb is sort of of independent.
Yes, I know, and I’ve seen THAT video too
It was made worse by the fact that an hour before I saw one brave little octopus making a run for it. He was out of his tank and haring off down the street, literally heading for the sea (as my guide pointed out). Sadly his chances of making it were about 0.00004%
And then i had that dish
Ugh. UGH. It was genuinely upsetting and I deeply regret it and I have vowed never to eat octopus again. Enough
Yes, I stopped eating octopus quite a few years back for much the same reason. They pull the same stunt in the Seoul food market tours, too. The drinking games are fun, though.
Yeah I had a laugh but woke up feeling shit - and guilty
I get increasingly uneasy about meat-eating in general. Trouble is I love it
But the least I can do is be choosier about what meat I eat and octopi just got struck from the menu
BTW if you liked Korea you MUST go to Japan. i have decided that Japan is the refined, purified version of Korea
If Korea is molasses, Japan is crystalline sugar; if Korea is opium, Japan is white heroin
Welcome back. I also removed Octopus from my eating choices a year ago - absolutely love it but they are clearly intelligent aliens so gave them up.
Would love a perfect lab grown pork/bacon as I love pigs and feel guilty about eating them as they are intelligent.
Not so fussed about cows and sheep - they are really stupid so deserve it. The brainy ones learned to make great milk and amazing wool - the meat ones, idiots.
I find dairy farming the saddest, as it’s a form of exhausting lifelong slavery at the end of which you go off for the chop and get turned into pet food. But I do like cheese.
I would very much be a vegetarian if it wasn’t for the fact that animals taste far too good.
Comments
So she did the very least that was required to ensure she can get on the ballot in 2028..
Omfg, these two sentences:
“Sal was regarded as one of the Top 50 Most Influential People Driving Change in the UK Through Inclusion by The Diversity & Power List in 2023. He is now available to hire for events related to DE&I, male allyship, fighting racial inequality and other related subjects.”
On the one hand you say you don't really know about US politics and on the other here you are with a prediction for the actual friggin' election.
Enough of your superior, holier-than-thou, detached meta-analysis.
My Official #Election2024 Prediction:
🔴 Trump - 297
🔵 Harris - 241
I said Trump in 2016.
I said Biden in 2020.
Didn’t miss a state 4 years ago. My map:
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1853252583529357720
I’m afraid so
I haven’t a clue what’s going to happen and won’t be making any concrete predictions! Except one . I expect Harris to win North Carolina !
2020 was convinced it would be Biden, effective margin was smaller than I thought it would be.
2016 thought Hillary would do it. Obviously got turned over.
This is nothing like 2016. Trump fatigue is real. America is ready to turn the page on Trump for good.
(Video from the Trump rally in Georgia tonight)
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1853269866150609038
It was made worse by the fact that an hour before I saw one brave little octopus making a run for it. He was out of his tank and haring off down the street, literally heading for the sea (as my guide pointed out). Sadly his chances of making it were about 0.00004%
And then i had that dish
Ugh. UGH. It was genuinely upsetting and I deeply regret it and I have vowed never to eat octopus again. Enough
📊 Final TIPP Daily Tracking Poll
2-WAY
🟦 Harris: 48%
🟥 Trump: 48%
🟪 Other: 1%
——
FULL FIELD
🟥 Trump: 48.8%
🟦 Harris: 48.3%
🟩 Stein: 0.7%
🟨 West: 0.7%
🟪 Other: 0.5%
——
#115 (1.8/3.0) | 11/1-11/3 | 1,411 LV
https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/1853398204223480107
National Harris 49.4% Trump 48.1%
Michigan Harris 49.2% Trump 48.5%
Wisconsin Harris 49% Trump 48.7%
Pennsylvania Trump 49.6% Harris 48.7%
Arizona Trump 51.1% Harris 47.6%
Nevada Trump 49.5% Harris 49.4%
Georgia Trump 50.4% Harris 48.6%
North Carolina Trump 50.5% Harris 48.9%
https://patriotpolling.com/our-polls/f/final-2024-presidential-poll
Trafalgar polling
Michigan Trump 48% Harris 47%
Wisconsin Harris 48% Trump 47%
Pennsylvania Trump 48% Harris 47%
https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/WI-Gen-Pres-Report-1103.pdf
https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/MI-Gen-Pres-Poll-Report-1103.pdf
https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/news/pa-pres-1103/
This article in the LRB is fascinating on the subject. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n17/amia-srinivasan/the-sucker-the-sucker
I should have had the courage of my convictions last night. I wanted to save that octopus. I should have done so. I should have picked him up, paid off the owner, taken him to the water and let him go
I didn’t and instead I got a hideous soju hangover and a sense of profound moral unease, serve me right
Oh well nothing lasts forever.....
To unpick that would be a huge effort, if even possible from publicly released data.
As with a lot of US politics, their processes are way behind other countries.
They pull the same stunt in the Seoul food market tours, too. The drinking games are fun, though.
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42b060s9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_California
Trump is polling 41% in New York in the latest Activote poll, he got 37% in New York state in 2020 and 36% in 2016 in the state
https://www.activote.net/harris-leads-in-new-york/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_York
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_York
The decision by Osborne to fix the sovereign grant to a percentage of crown estate profits was one of the most generous and pro-Royal Family acts by a politician for as long as I can remember.
"Badenoch studied Computer Systems Engineering at the University of Sussex, completing a Master of Engineering (MEng) degree in 2003.[25][26]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemi_Badenoch#Early_life_and_education
Even if the royals still get more of its profits, taxpayers aren't paying a penny more in taxes for them
From what I can see, if a married couple own the main farmhouse jointly, even if the land is held in one individiluals name, there would be full relief on £2 million available. If the *land* too was held by a married couple in two different names, then there would up to £3 million relief available, again 0% tax. Different generations can be added to ownership too.
The NFU in my area have already started planning meetings to discuss this with farmers. So I'd say the evidence is despite huffing and puffing, they know it's here to stay.
I expect this will be like the winter fuel allowance, I don't see the government budging. Clearly the lead in time has been given to allow businesses time to prepare.
Having said all this, land prices got to these levels by high volumes of outside investments, particularly in southern England, Highland estates, etc. Land price has had no correlation with land productively for quite some time.
There is a big disparity in per acre price/demand in most of the country, home counties land prices are similarly higher in the same way London house prices are. So a farmer in a boggy part of Argyll should have less of an issue with new IHT rules than a Kent arable farmer on a similar acreage
His "Summer In The City" is one of the most sampled tracks out there, I heard it first sampled by Pharcyde
https://youtu.be/6xN3KOY2kbg
The Selzer Iowa poll was a political shockwave. What if I told you there was a poll in neighboring Kansas that shows the same dynamic as Iowa? It's the Kansas Speaks poll which had Trump only +5 in a state he won +14 in 2020
Here's the kicker for the Kansas Speaks poll. Harris' surprising strength comes from older people with a large gender gap. The same dynamic as Selzer's poll
https://x.com/ElectProject/status/1853229086606504332
@MollyJongFast
There’s a real scenario here where older women deliver for Harris
I get increasingly uneasy about meat-eating in general. Trouble is I love it
But the least I can do is be choosier about what meat I eat and octopi just got struck from the menu
BTW if you liked Korea you MUST go to Japan. i have decided that Japan is the refined, purified version of Korea
If Korea is molasses, Japan is crystalline sugar; if Korea is opium, Japan is white heroin
Remember both Hillary and Biden were more centrist than Harris is, so you would expect some Independents and moderates nationally to switch to Trump for the first time against her even if they voted for Hillary and Biden before. Trump might win Orange County, California for example or some New York outer wealthy suburbs he lost before.
However states like Iowa prefer more liberal Democrats, they voted for Obama over Hillary in 2008 and even for Dukakis and Gore for instance but not for Hillary or Biden so Harris and Walz could pick up some surprise states like that. Walz will also go down better in rural Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania than Hillary and Kaine did but probably less well than Hillary in urban California or New York city
@brianstelter
·
25m
Donald Trump has been the biggest political story of the past ten years. A media fixation. A divisive force. And today is the last day he will ever campaign for president.
https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1853406008757850558
...because there wont be an election in 2028 if he wins.
** NEW on shadow Cabinet reshuffle **
Laura Trott has been appointed Shadow Education Secretary and Neil O’Brien has been appointed Shadow Minister of State for Education. Both will be on the opposition front bench for Education oral questions this afternoon.
Alex Thompson
@AlexThomp
·
58m
New Yorker cover this week.
https://x.com/AlexThomp/status/1853397962174476619
Polling from a sample of one?
As has been pointed out below, it is the famous “40 steps” of Busan. At the worst point of the Korean War Busan was the only bit of Korea not overrun by the commies. So it was full of refugees and war orphans and the like (the war still shapes Busan today). the most abject or desperate would gather on those steps hoping to spot other family members lost in the chaos of the times, but all coalescing there, by those steps
However as the Tories, Reform, the LDs and SNP oppose the WFA cut and oppose the removal of the IHT exemption for farms if they lose their majority next time both will go
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7c2760ed915d1b3a307c38/0319.pdf
This scored the change to IHT to give business and agricultural property 100% relief at £25m.
Good luck to all those with serious money on the outcome, which could be anything from 330 EC votes one way, to 330 the other way!!
It is an extension of the result she got in her September poll.
https://x.com/Morning_Joe/status/1853399904594337814
Drumroll please…
Harris: 302
Trump: 236
Harris takes WI, MI, PA, NC and GA
Trump takes NV and AZ.
Some further thoughts:
- the rust belt will end up not being particularly close. Harris takes each of WI, MI and PA by a few points and clear margins.
- IA will stay with Trump, but only by 1-2 points. FL will also be closer than anticipated, with a similar margin. Conversely, TX will do its usual TX thing and be very comfortable GOP.
- The closest states will be NV and GA. Both will come down to very small margins (potentially hundreds of votes) so we won’t know the winner for ages, but it won’t matter because neither will be tipping point.
- Harris will have a clear lead in popular vote. 3-4 points.
- GOP will win the Senate 51/2-49/8. Democrats will gain the House by a small margin.
- Lots of commentators will tell us over the coming days that the result was obvious now that we have it.
(Please note that I called the Labour seat total within 3 seats in 2024, and the Tory seat total within 2. Does that mean anything? Nope. But if I get this one right too I will be making a big deal of it!)
Does that help Harris and hinder Trump at all?
Russias invasion of Germany?
The 2 year long droughts from climate change?
Starmer getting his tickets to Arsenal upgraded?
It's not even a popular instrument in Korea.
To my mind the best PB prognosticator - by a distance - is @Andy_JS. He is genuinely gifted
What is he predicting?!
This time with no guard rails is it worth taking a chance . Let’s hope enough voters take him seriously .
Someone surely knows. Are they frit of saying anything, or quietly making money?
You can still find the streets frequented by the US, UK, Turkish troops etc, and they are still somewhat seedy and red lighty, not that I’m alleging anything against your old man!
But yeah for sure he’d have passed through Busan and known those steps and drank around that area. Busan is cool. Like a kind of Korean San Francisco (without the Fent and the homeless)
Would love a perfect lab grown pork/bacon as I love pigs and feel guilty about eating them as they are intelligent.
Not so fussed about cows and sheep - they are really stupid so deserve it. The brainy ones learned to make great milk and amazing wool - the meat ones, idiots.
For example, in 1994, the Republicans won 51.5 percent of the popular vote, the Democrats 44.7 percent. Republicans won the popular vote more often than not in the elections that followed 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
There are problems with using the House popular vote. It does not include DC. More important, especially in recent years, not all seats are contested by both parties. It is possible to think of adjustments that would reduce both problems, but I haven't seen them done. Even in its flawed state, the total House vote is a better measure of party strength than presidential wins.
Opinion polling is really hard when it is this close and the electorate is unstable - Trump brings into play lots of usual non voters - both for and against. So whilst the relative popularity is unusually stable compared to a generation ago, accurately predicting which of them will vote this time is really hard and guessy.
Pollsters are herding - presumably by selective publishing and/or adjustments post the result coming in
Betting markets are dominated by mega (maga?) money from a handful of billionaires, possibly seeking to manipulate the market, but definitely significantly moving the market.
It's worth noting that Sean Trende predicted 48:48, several weeks ago, on the basis of the Washington Primary.
As a policy this won't be the biggest money spinner, there are methods round it available for most family farms who wish to keep farming, 7 year rule being the main one
Not sure re Andy’s prediction.
In 2020 my American mother-in-law said that, if Trump lost in 2020 he would be finished, because Americans don't like a loser.
It's looked for a long time as though she was wrong, because Trump managed to persuade enough people that he didn't lose, and so he wasn't a loser. But, perhaps, there are just enough people who didn't buy that lie that he will be decisively defeated.
If Harris carries all the Biden states, and adds those that would be won on a 4.5% swing, then she'd win the Electoral College by 413 to 125.
If the majority of polls have been systematically wrong then I think it's possible we could be missing something dramatic like that. Lots of things are possible.
And considerably more revenue is required to address some of the big things that the last Govt ran away from or promised and left unfunded even in prospect, such as social care, public realm, policing, defence, local Government and others.
I think there is one, or perhaps two, budgets still to go where significant changes are possible that will have faded from memory by the next election.
Hold on to your hats.
One of the weird things about Busan (near those steps) is that the boozy, whorey, dodgy streets are STILL like that, but the Americans have been replaced by…. Russians. Yes, I know. Quite unexpected and doesn’t really make sense, but it is true
The Russian fishing fleet has a big port near Busan and all the shady Russian “biznismen” congregate in that same area, you see lots of signs in Cyrillic