If immigration came down to say 200,000 a year is that enough to demonstrate progress?
Absolutely not. Barry, 63, from Hartlepool who looks like a shaven pated Eric von Stroheim clad in head to foot Adidas wants net negative immigration and he wants to see and feel the difference on the litter strewn streets of the festering crap hole in which he lives.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year puts you in the top 10% of general election voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide general elections
The headline is already absurd enough, then you realise they are talking about Chingford.
Building THREE new homes is now beyond the pale. THREE!
Approved by the Planning Committee.
Looking in the local press, it's classic NIMBYism. "I supporting housing, just not HERE .. ug, ug, ug !"
Resident Simon Twohig said during last night’s meeting: “We appreciate the long-term need [for housing], but this is too many residential buildings in too small and confined a location.” Locals previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the street was “losing its identity,” and extra cars would mean “chaos, absolute chaos”. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/leafy-essex-border-neighbourhood-losing-9772295
Why even the need for the planning committee? What is ever wrong with three houses?
These people need to be told to kindly F off.
If SKS loses on this issue with such a majority he’s lost me for good.
Hang on, Horse, that headline isn't by the objectors, who are clearly referring to the street. And that is at least something that is logically tenable, whether or not the position taken.
Obviously by some crap AI system. So don't blame them for it, [edit] like the tweeter does.
No it isn’t.
Rejecting the building of three houses is not logically tenable in any way.
It is, if the location is too small or dangerous, for instance.
Otherwise you're saying it is unjustifiable to refuse *any* planning application (OK, for three or more houses). And therefore effectively demanding that the planning system is completely cancelled.
Which is a completely different matter to complaining about a specific case of people complaining about three houses. Where you may well be justified [edit].
Whilst I agree that specific objection to specific schemes can be valid if (in England) they are about "relevant planning matters" (there's a longish list). I had a proposed profit-mongering house very close to one of my tenants reduced from 5 bedrooms to 3 bedrooms, because it loomed over the garden like the Balrog over Gandalf at Khazad-dum (metaphorically); I'm very good at writing objections where necessary.
It ... Did ... Not ... Pass (unmodified).
Quite often a large majority are laid aside because they are not about things that can objected about, and getting a PP through is partly about drawing the potential teeth first. Maybe 80-90% of objections are 57 varieties of "Waaaaaaahhhhh !".
Here the planning committee passed the proposal, which means that it had been evaluated according to law by professionals, and the committee agreed.
So I think Nimby likely to be a fair accusation here, given that the mindset is often "but we HAVE to oppose development, don't we?".
It’s a mad pointless exercise predicting GEs four years out but that’s what we were here for on PB. Mad pointless exercises in prediction. My go is, GE 2028:
Result: a right wing coalition govt with the Tories as JUNIOR partners
Labour 32 Tories 20 Reformation 16 (post Farage) LD 15 Muskovites (new Farage) 10 Green 5 SNP 2
You think THIRTY TWO PERCENT of the electorate are going to schlep to a polling booth to put a cross by LABOUR?
After a term in office, Labour will be down from this year’s 34%; that’s almost a given. So 32% is right at the upper end of credible scores. Nevertheless it is possible that if the rest of the vote is more evenly split between Tories, Reform and LibDems than last time, they could retain their big majority.
The discrepancy between polling and GE for Labour voters was rather anomalous, but the extraordinary thing was the voting efficiency. The Labour voters turned out where it mattered and didn't where it didn't (or where they thought it didn', hence the Lab to Con in Leicester East and to Independent in Leicester South).
In general the Lab voters were correct and didn't turn out where the seats were thought safe. Whether this was apathy, dislike of Starmerism etc we can speculate.
Will this be repeated at GE 2029 we just don't know. If Lab voters felt that their seat mattered then they may well turn out next time. They may loathe Farage and be less bothered by Gaza for example.
So we shouldn't assume 32% as the Lab ceiling next GE as the voters may well feel different motivations, particularly if Starmerism delivers and the alternatives are anathema.
Can the Tories get above 40% again? No reason why not.
But the trend ain’t their friend. Nor is it friendly to Labour
Reform is clearly surging, mirroring the rise of the populist right elsewhere (and a smaller rise of the hard left)
This global phenomenon echoes global forces: suppressing wages, raising prices, often making housing costly in countries enduring mass immigration
I see no reason why any of this will stop (apart from the technology I cannot mention) so I see no reason why the polarisation will stop. Ergo the populist right perhaps even far right will eventually achieve power in multiple countries
I reckon we could see:
1. Mass deportations 2. Repression of Islam 3. Higher taxes on the rich/tech corporations to pay for welfare 4. Western abandonment of proactive foreign policies 5. Brutal borders 6. Right wing suppression of left wing speech 7. Tariffs - aimed mainly at China 8. A Cold War between a US led west and a Chinese dominated alternative
Not pretty. Indeed ugly and sad and dystopian
Let’s hope the robots save us
Indeed, liberalism may end up a mark of social status in a decade or two rather than a philosophy that can actually win general elections. That is already being seen in recent western elections where the most educated and highest earners in the French legislative and US elections found themselves on the losing side as they did here with Brexit
Farage’s big problem is going to be healthcare. How does he sell a private-style NHS?
Most of the public will accept any health system which is free at the point of delivery, has national coverage, does not discriminate by income and is funded by broadly progressive forms of tax or national insurance. While the Reform party gestures towards review, or looking at the French model, I have no seen any policies which basically depart from this. Only a small group of socialists object to free at delivery treatment being provided by the private sector.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
The headline is already absurd enough, then you realise they are talking about Chingford.
Building THREE new homes is now beyond the pale. THREE!
Approved by the Planning Committee.
Looking in the local press, it's classic NIMBYism. "I supporting housing, just not HERE .. ug, ug, ug !"
Resident Simon Twohig said during last night’s meeting: “We appreciate the long-term need [for housing], but this is too many residential buildings in too small and confined a location.” Locals previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the street was “losing its identity,” and extra cars would mean “chaos, absolute chaos”. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/leafy-essex-border-neighbourhood-losing-9772295
Why even the need for the planning committee? What is ever wrong with three houses?
These people need to be told to kindly F off.
If SKS loses on this issue with such a majority he’s lost me for good.
Hang on, Horse, that headline isn't by the objectors, who are clearly referring to the street. And that is at least something that is logically tenable, whether or not the position taken.
Obviously by some crap AI system. So don't blame them for it, [edit] like the tweeter does.
No it isn’t.
Rejecting the building of three houses is not logically tenable in any way.
Three houses in the space formerly (maybe currently) occupied by one bungalow, so perhaps not quite a slam dunk.
UK warns Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against insurgent forces seizing territory across the country. FCDO Middle East Minister, Hamish Falconer, said any use of chemical weapons by either regime or Russian forces would be “intolerable”. 1/2
Oh good, we’ve found Sir Keir’s Hail Mary
The Syrian Government has tended to use barrel bombs with chlorine in them, dropped I think from helicopters. It's useful when insurgent forces are hiding in the basements of civilian facilities. The chlorine is released flows downwards, and it causes intolerable coughing, breathing difficulties and panic (though not death it would appear) and the insurgents pour out of their hidey holes and can be dispatched with no harm to the civilians therein, and no destruction to the building. A 'chemical weapon' that seems infinitely preferable to me than turning cities into moonscapes Russia style. But it's all part of the grinding PR machine of war.
Hawkish elements of the US state (along with Turkey) seem highly rattled that Trump might take their ball away. Oh well.
So you're for chemical weapons? Think how bad chlorine is for people who stand on their head.
I'm not for any weapons, but it is foolish to think that a weapon is instantly more devillish because it has the word chemical in it. That's for stupid people. I could be wrong, but on balance using these barrel bombs appears to be slightly more humane than using the explosive variety.
Maybe, depends if you find choking to death with corrupted lungs more humane then crushed under the rubble.
I do think it is wilful ignorance to believe chlorine is some how a selective weapon. These unharmed civilians are also not in basements or hidey holes? And have you not seen the videos of Aleppo post war? The only place that looks worse is Gaza.
Farage’s big problem is going to be healthcare. How does he sell a private-style NHS?
Farage's real problem is that his manifesto had as big a black hole in it as Trump's, and he's lying about it ... just like Trump.
Even if he got in, there's zero chance of him delivering on anything like the expectation created ... just like Trump.
He's Just William aspiring to run the Government.
The real question is whether voters are as crassly stupid and as gullible as Farage seems to think / need.
We can perhaps learn lessons from Trump's non-delivery of promises in the USA, and the extent to which buyers remorse occurs. Trump now has the only thing he wanted, which was to stay out of prison.
He's currently throwing tantrums about the possibility of being tried or sentenced (NY sex abuse case) for charges held over until he is no longer President in 4 years' time.
Carl Emmerson, deputy director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “Reform UK proposes tax cuts that it estimates would cost nearly £90 billion per year, and spending increases of £50 billion per year. It claims that it would pay for these through £150 billion per year of reductions in other spending, covering public services, debt interest and working-age benefits. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/reform-uk-manifesto-reaction
The headline is already absurd enough, then you realise they are talking about Chingford.
Building THREE new homes is now beyond the pale. THREE!
Approved by the Planning Committee.
Looking in the local press, it's classic NIMBYism. "I supporting housing, just not HERE .. ug, ug, ug !"
Resident Simon Twohig said during last night’s meeting: “We appreciate the long-term need [for housing], but this is too many residential buildings in too small and confined a location.” Locals previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the street was “losing its identity,” and extra cars would mean “chaos, absolute chaos”. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/leafy-essex-border-neighbourhood-losing-9772295
Why even the need for the planning committee? What is ever wrong with three houses?
These people need to be told to kindly F off.
If SKS loses on this issue with such a majority he’s lost me for good.
Hang on, Horse, that headline isn't by the objectors, who are clearly referring to the street. And that is at least something that is logically tenable, whether or not the position taken.
Obviously by some crap AI system. So don't blame them for it, [edit] like the tweeter does.
No it isn’t.
Rejecting the building of three houses is not logically tenable in any way.
Three houses in the space formerly (maybe currently) occupied by one bungalow, so perhaps not quite a slam dunk.
Occupied by one bungalow or by one bungalow and its garden ?
The headline is already absurd enough, then you realise they are talking about Chingford.
Building THREE new homes is now beyond the pale. THREE!
Approved by the Planning Committee.
Looking in the local press, it's classic NIMBYism. "I supporting housing, just not HERE .. ug, ug, ug !"
Resident Simon Twohig said during last night’s meeting: “We appreciate the long-term need [for housing], but this is too many residential buildings in too small and confined a location.” Locals previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the street was “losing its identity,” and extra cars would mean “chaos, absolute chaos”. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/leafy-essex-border-neighbourhood-losing-9772295
Why even the need for the planning committee? What is ever wrong with three houses?
These people need to be told to kindly F off.
If SKS loses on this issue with such a majority he’s lost me for good.
Hang on, Horse, that headline isn't by the objectors, who are clearly referring to the street. And that is at least something that is logically tenable, whether or not the position taken.
Obviously by some crap AI system. So don't blame them for it, [edit] like the tweeter does.
No it isn’t.
Rejecting the building of three houses is not logically tenable in any way.
It is, if the location is too small or dangerous, for instance.
Otherwise you're saying it is unjustifiable to refuse *any* planning application (OK, for three or more houses). And therefore effectively demanding that the planning system is completely cancelled.
Which is a completely different matter to complaining about a specific case of people complaining about three houses. Where you may well be justified [edit].
Whilst I agree that specific objection to specific schemes can be valid if (in England) they are about "relevant planning matters" (there's a longish list). I had a proposed profit-mongering house very close to one of my tenants reduced from 5 bedrooms to 3 bedrooms, because it loomed over the garden like the Balrog over Gandalf at Khazad-dum (metaphorically); I'm very good at writing objections where necessary.
It ... Did ... Not ... Pass (unmodified).
Quite often a large majority are laid aside because they are not about things that can objected about, and getting a PP through is partly about drawing the potential teeth first. Maybe 80-90% of objections are 57 varieties of "Waaaaaaahhhhh !".
Here the planning committee passed the proposal, which means that it had been evaluated according to law by professionals, and the committee agreed.
So I think Nimby likely to be a fair accusation here, given that the mindset is often "but we HAVE to oppose development, don't we?".
Oh, there are relevant planning matters in Scotland too. On occasions when of elderly relatives/family friends got applications for next door I was roped in, but had to sayt that simply reducing the value of the house was not a valid complaint, and I wasn't going to draft a letter on that basis. And so on and so forth.
The people who think it's sufficient to phone a councillor or council officer or simply sound off to a third party, without sending a formal written letter - if necessary by a solicitor* - into the planning process ...
* Not as unreasonable as it might seem. That planning application *included part of my friend's property* - which the developer was obviously planning to take over ... and they didn't know about the proposal: the developer hadn't even sent a next neighbour letter. I urged a solicitor's letter to the planning process, but no ...
The headline is already absurd enough, then you realise they are talking about Chingford.
Building THREE new homes is now beyond the pale. THREE!
Approved by the Planning Committee.
Looking in the local press, it's classic NIMBYism. "I supporting housing, just not HERE .. ug, ug, ug !"
Resident Simon Twohig said during last night’s meeting: “We appreciate the long-term need [for housing], but this is too many residential buildings in too small and confined a location.” Locals previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the street was “losing its identity,” and extra cars would mean “chaos, absolute chaos”. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/leafy-essex-border-neighbourhood-losing-9772295
Why even the need for the planning committee? What is ever wrong with three houses?
These people need to be told to kindly F off.
If SKS loses on this issue with such a majority he’s lost me for good.
Hang on, Horse, that headline isn't by the objectors, who are clearly referring to the street. And that is at least something that is logically tenable, whether or not the position taken.
Obviously by some crap AI system. So don't blame them for it, [edit] like the tweeter does.
No it isn’t.
Rejecting the building of three houses is not logically tenable in any way.
Three houses in the space formerly (maybe currently) occupied by one bungalow, so perhaps not quite a slam dunk.
Article says 620 sq m - so (say) 20 x 10m each. Even terraced ...
And from the story, the original proposal was 4 houses.
UK warns Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against insurgent forces seizing territory across the country. FCDO Middle East Minister, Hamish Falconer, said any use of chemical weapons by either regime or Russian forces would be “intolerable”. 1/2
Oh good, we’ve found Sir Keir’s Hail Mary
The Syrian Government has tended to use barrel bombs with chlorine in them, dropped I think from helicopters. It's useful when insurgent forces are hiding in the basements of civilian facilities. The chlorine is released flows downwards, and it causes intolerable coughing, breathing difficulties and panic (though not death it would appear) and the insurgents pour out of their hidey holes and can be dispatched with no harm to the civilians therein, and no destruction to the building. A 'chemical weapon' that seems infinitely preferable to me than turning cities into moonscapes Russia style. But it's all part of the grinding PR machine of war.
Hawkish elements of the US state (along with Turkey) seem highly rattled that Trump might take their ball away. Oh well.
Sounds good. But what sort of chlorine is it that it can distinguish between insurgents and civilians? I only studied chemistry to O level so never came across such clever elements.
On topic: Rishi's legacy is going to be worse than Trusses.
Turns out useless managerialism combined with a sprinkling of bonkers policies about smoking doesn't cut the mustard
Sunak made mistakes - as Chancellor, as Prime Minister and as Conservative leader.
But the damage was done by the Downing Street parties, Truss cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and the ocean of sleaze.
The rot was too intrinsic within the Conservatives - they deserved to lose and to lose big.
I say this as someone who voted for them and wants them to learn from their mistakes and misbehaviour.
No it wasn't. The polling trajectory is quite clear. If this were correct, we'd have seen severe drops under Boris, worse under Truss, and Sunak steadying things a bit but falling to mount a significant recovery.
Instead we saw reasonably good polling for Boris until the Sunakites stabbed him, followed by a crash in polling after Truss's minibudget, followed by a cautious recovery when Sunak came in promising to steady the ship, followed by a faltering of that recovery and a slow, steady decline, eventually equalling the worst of Truss. Sunak owns that fully.
You have your political opinion and that's fine, but please don't try to misrepresent the facts on a political betting forum where everyone knows what happened.
Boris destroyed himself by repeatedly breaking his own lockdown rules and then pointlessly trying to protect sleaze merchants such as Patterson and Pincher.
Truss destroyed herself by cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and putting people's homes and mortgages at risk.
The damage was done. And it couldn't be repaired whoever was Conservative leader.
Could Sunak have done better as Conservative leader ?
Yes. But even if he had done, and the other Conservative politicians had behaved themselves, they would still have lost.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 (and where Corbynism was always strongest) but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
Farage’s big problem is going to be healthcare. How does he sell a private-style NHS?
Farage's real problem is that his manifesto had as big a black hole in it as Trump's, and he's lying about it ... just like Trump.
Even if he got in, there's zero chance of him delivering on anything like the expectation created ... just like Trump.
He's Just William aspiring to run the Government.
The real question is whether voters are as crassly stupid and as gullible as Farage seems to think / need.
We can perhaps learn lessons from Trump's non-delivery of promises in the USA, and the extent to which buyers remorse occurs. Trump now has the only thing he wanted, which was to stay out of prison.
He's currently throwing tantrums about the possibility of being tried or sentenced (NY sex abuse case) for charges held over until he is no longer President in 4 years' time.
Carl Emmerson, deputy director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “Reform UK proposes tax cuts that it estimates would cost nearly £90 billion per year, and spending increases of £50 billion per year. It claims that it would pay for these through £150 billion per year of reductions in other spending, covering public services, debt interest and working-age benefits. https://ifs.org.uk/articles/reform-uk-manifesto-reaction
This of course is all true about Reformonomics - it's rubbish. But separate from the issue of getting elected of course.
The more urgent question is that it seems to me that Labour in truth need about £100 billion pa to deliver the state's part of the bargain + contingencies + defence + black swans, and is about as realistic as Reform when it comes to the realities.
The headline is already absurd enough, then you realise they are talking about Chingford.
Building THREE new homes is now beyond the pale. THREE!
Approved by the Planning Committee.
Looking in the local press, it's classic NIMBYism. "I supporting housing, just not HERE .. ug, ug, ug !"
Resident Simon Twohig said during last night’s meeting: “We appreciate the long-term need [for housing], but this is too many residential buildings in too small and confined a location.” Locals previously told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the street was “losing its identity,” and extra cars would mean “chaos, absolute chaos”. https://www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/leafy-essex-border-neighbourhood-losing-9772295
Why even the need for the planning committee? What is ever wrong with three houses?
These people need to be told to kindly F off.
If SKS loses on this issue with such a majority he’s lost me for good.
Hang on, Horse, that headline isn't by the objectors, who are clearly referring to the street. And that is at least something that is logically tenable, whether or not the position taken.
Obviously by some crap AI system. So don't blame them for it, [edit] like the tweeter does.
No it isn’t.
Rejecting the building of three houses is not logically tenable in any way.
Three houses in the space formerly (maybe currently) occupied by one bungalow, so perhaps not quite a slam dunk.
Article says 620 sq m - so (say) 20 x 10m each. Even terraced ...
And from the story, the original proposal was 4 houses.
So that's fine in principle. 20sqm each is about 30-35 per hectare, once (in planning principle) open space, roads etc have been allowed for. That's normal if balanced appropriately. It is challenging in most placed below about 130-140sqm for a 2-bed, due to offstreet parking required.
For a terrace they would want a 20m deep plot depth usually, but at 20x10 there's ample room for a house and a drive next to it - subject to unusual layouts. If it was main road they would have to be creative to permit car turning and "exiting in a forward gear".
I also stopped another one where a neighbour wanted to turn his long, thin bungalow on a tight site into 3 one beds for rental. They were under on the private amenity space required for each dwelling.
But I avoided putting my name on that (neighbour had previously harrassed my tenant quite nastily, so I needed to kill his PP without blowback). I knew the Officer would not look until the deadline day, so I phoned him up in advance and asked his advice about how to object to all the things I wanted him to be thinking about, then did not need to put a late objection in because he rejected it for my reasons and others on his assessment.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
But in your happy scenario home ownership becomes impossible in southern England because people are deemed to be 'rich' at £50k, and so deserve taxing more, before they can become homeowners.
Not a basis for a happy socioeconomic system nor a successful one.
If immigration came down to say 200,000 a year is that enough to demonstrate progress?
Absolutely not. Barry, 63, from Hartlepool who looks like a shaven pated Eric von Stroheim clad in head to foot Adidas wants net negative immigration and he wants to see and feel the difference on the litter strewn streets of the festering crap hole in which he lives.
Which is your favourite white van? Crafter or Sprinter, and why?
Both good. You can't beat German quality.
You are indeed a genuine Reform patriot. The fraudulent right wing faux tradesman would have extolled the virtues of the Turkish Ford Transit in a misguided attempt at British exceptionalism.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
But in your happy scenario home ownership becomes impossible in southern England because people are deemed to be 'rich' at £50k, and so deserve taxing more, before they can become homeowners.
Not a basis for a happy socioeconomic system nor a successful one.
People starting out do not need to buy an average house.
If there is insistence, then it is "won't" not "can't".
Al Qaeda linked rebels HTS dominate the rebels overall.
Assad will try and hold the Alawite heartlands on the coast and Lebanese border and parts of Damascus with Russian mercenary and Hezbollah support. Alawites will also fight for Assad as he is one of their own
On this matter, you've been wrong about pretty much everything. You would be best served by writing "I think" before things.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 (and where Corbynism was always strongest) but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
First time buyers don't buy a home at the average price in their area. They buy at the lower end of the market - a 2-bed terrace or a flat.
The average home, let's say a 3/4 bed semi, is what they move to later, when they are earning more and have equity from the first property.
On topic: Rishi's legacy is going to be worse than Trusses.
Turns out useless managerialism combined with a sprinkling of bonkers policies about smoking doesn't cut the mustard
Sunak made mistakes - as Chancellor, as Prime Minister and as Conservative leader.
But the damage was done by the Downing Street parties, Truss cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and the ocean of sleaze.
The rot was too intrinsic within the Conservatives - they deserved to lose and to lose big.
I say this as someone who voted for them and wants them to learn from their mistakes and misbehaviour.
No it wasn't. The polling trajectory is quite clear. If this were correct, we'd have seen severe drops under Boris, worse under Truss, and Sunak steadying things a bit but falling to mount a significant recovery.
Instead we saw reasonably good polling for Boris until the Sunakites stabbed him, followed by a crash in polling after Truss's minibudget, followed by a cautious recovery when Sunak came in promising to steady the ship, followed by a faltering of that recovery and a slow, steady decline, eventually equalling the worst of Truss. Sunak owns that fully.
You have your political opinion and that's fine, but please don't try to misrepresent the facts on a political betting forum where everyone knows what happened.
Boris destroyed himself by repeatedly breaking his own lockdown rules and then pointlessly trying to protect sleaze merchants such as Patterson and Pincher.
Truss destroyed herself by cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and putting people's homes and mortgages at risk.
The damage was done. And it couldn't be repaired whoever was Conservative leader.
Could Sunak have done better as Conservative leader ?
Yes. But even if he had done, and the other Conservative politicians had behaved themselves, they would still have lost.
I believe that is largely correct however Sunak made some schoolboy errors. NI, HS2 and Rwanda were all avoidable mistakes. His first error was including the disgraced, self-soiling Braverman in his Cabinet.
Sunak also tried to future proof the Tories with the early election. He hadn't accounted for disparate voting patterns and the Farage surge, but he tried to tee them up for the win in 2029. History will look on him more favourably than his nearest predecessors.
UK warns Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against insurgent forces seizing territory across the country. FCDO Middle East Minister, Hamish Falconer, said any use of chemical weapons by either regime or Russian forces would be “intolerable”. 1/2
Oh good, we’ve found Sir Keir’s Hail Mary
The Syrian Government has tended to use barrel bombs with chlorine in them, dropped I think from helicopters. It's useful when insurgent forces are hiding in the basements of civilian facilities. The chlorine is released flows downwards, and it causes intolerable coughing, breathing difficulties and panic (though not death it would appear) and the insurgents pour out of their hidey holes and can be dispatched with no harm to the civilians therein, and no destruction to the building. A 'chemical weapon' that seems infinitely preferable to me than turning cities into moonscapes Russia style. But it's all part of the grinding PR machine of war.
Hawkish elements of the US state (along with Turkey) seem highly rattled that Trump might take their ball away. Oh well.
Sounds good. But what sort of chlorine is it that it can distinguish between insurgents and civilians? I only studied chemistry to O level so never came across such clever elements.
Why are chemical weapons bad? A primer, for pro-Russian idiots.
TL:dr; for many reasons.
Bullets and bombs are generally aimed, especially if to be effective. Once expended, its danger has generally gone (which is one reason why delayed-action bombs, or ones that do not explode properly, such as cluster bombs, are so dangerous and are frowned upon). But even cluster bombs can be better aimed than a gas cloud.
A cloud of toxic gas is very different. Once released, it continues being dangerous for sometimes considerable periods; it can persist in rooms or enclosed spaces, endangering rescuers. Wind can blow it away to other areas.
It is indiscriminate; a gas cloud has no way of knowing who, or what, it is attacking - unlike a targeted bomb or bullet.
The gasses vary massively, from simple ones such as chlorine, to nerve agents. They all can have long-term effects on the health of people subjected to them. Rescuers have little idea what gas has been used, and what they need to do to protect themselves, hindering rescue of the injured.
We did have an expert on such matters on here...
But most of all IMV: in an ideal world, we would have no weapons and live in peace. We have a fairly successful ban on the use of chemical weapons, and stockpiles are low or nonexistent. It would be good if such bans could be extended to other weapons through mutual agreement. It would be bad if the use of chemical weapons suddenly became acceptable.
IMV that is a really good reason why we should be against their use.
UK warns Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against insurgent forces seizing territory across the country. FCDO Middle East Minister, Hamish Falconer, said any use of chemical weapons by either regime or Russian forces would be “intolerable”. 1/2
Oh good, we’ve found Sir Keir’s Hail Mary
The Syrian Government has tended to use barrel bombs with chlorine in them, dropped I think from helicopters. It's useful when insurgent forces are hiding in the basements of civilian facilities. The chlorine is released flows downwards, and it causes intolerable coughing, breathing difficulties and panic (though not death it would appear) and the insurgents pour out of their hidey holes and can be dispatched with no harm to the civilians therein, and no destruction to the building. A 'chemical weapon' that seems infinitely preferable to me than turning cities into moonscapes Russia style. But it's all part of the grinding PR machine of war.
Hawkish elements of the US state (along with Turkey) seem highly rattled that Trump might take their ball away. Oh well.
Sounds good. But what sort of chlorine is it that it can distinguish between insurgents and civilians? I only studied chemistry to O level so never came across such clever elements.
Why are chemical weapons bad? A primer, for pro-Russian idiots.
TL:dr; for many reasons.
Bullets and bombs are generally aimed, especially if to be effective. Once expended, its danger has generally gone (which is one reason why delayed-action bombs, or ones that do not explode properly, such as cluster bombs, are so dangerous and are frowned upon). But even cluster bombs can be better aimed than a gas cloud.
A cloud of toxic gas is very different. Once released, it continues being dangerous for sometimes considerable periods; it can persist in rooms or enclosed spaces, endangering rescuers. Wind can blow it away to other areas.
It is indiscriminate; a gas cloud has no way of knowing who, or what, it is attacking - unlike a targeted bomb or bullet.
The gasses vary massively, from simple ones such as chlorine, to nerve agents. They all can have long-term effects on the health of people subjected to them. Rescuers have little idea what gas has been used, and what they need to do to protect themselves, hindering rescue of the injured.
We did have an expert on such matters on here...
But most of all IMV: in an ideal world, we would have no weapons and live in peace. We have a fairly successful ban on the use of chemical weapons, and stockpiles are low or nonexistent. It would be good if such bans could be extended to other weapons through mutual agreement. It would be bad if the use of chemical weapons suddenly became acceptable.
IMV that is a really good reason why we should be against their use.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 (and where Corbynism was always strongest) but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
People who are saving for their first home tend to be in their 30s - and it's hard to see how you could class a couple of 30-somethings who had already reached the top quintile of household income as being anything other than rich.
UK warns Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against insurgent forces seizing territory across the country. FCDO Middle East Minister, Hamish Falconer, said any use of chemical weapons by either regime or Russian forces would be “intolerable”. 1/2
Oh good, we’ve found Sir Keir’s Hail Mary
The Syrian Government has tended to use barrel bombs with chlorine in them, dropped I think from helicopters. It's useful when insurgent forces are hiding in the basements of civilian facilities. The chlorine is released flows downwards, and it causes intolerable coughing, breathing difficulties and panic (though not death it would appear) and the insurgents pour out of their hidey holes and can be dispatched with no harm to the civilians therein, and no destruction to the building. A 'chemical weapon' that seems infinitely preferable to me than turning cities into moonscapes Russia style. But it's all part of the grinding PR machine of war.
Hawkish elements of the US state (along with Turkey) seem highly rattled that Trump might take their ball away. Oh well.
Sounds good. But what sort of chlorine is it that it can distinguish between insurgents and civilians? I only studied chemistry to O level so never came across such clever elements.
Why are chemical weapons bad? A primer, for pro-Russian idiots.
TL:dr; for many reasons.
Bullets and bombs are generally aimed, especially if to be effective. Once expended, its danger has generally gone (which is one reason why delayed-action bombs, or ones that do not explode properly, such as cluster bombs, are so dangerous and are frowned upon). But even cluster bombs can be better aimed than a gas cloud.
A cloud of toxic gas is very different. Once released, it continues being dangerous for sometimes considerable periods; it can persist in rooms or enclosed spaces, endangering rescuers. Wind can blow it away to other areas.
It is indiscriminate; a gas cloud has no way of knowing who, or what, it is attacking - unlike a targeted bomb or bullet.
The gasses vary massively, from simple ones such as chlorine, to nerve agents. They all can have long-term effects on the health of people subjected to them. Rescuers have little idea what gas has been used, and what they need to do to protect themselves, hindering rescue of the injured.
We did have an expert on such matters on here...
But most of all IMV: in an ideal world, we would have no weapons and live in peace. We have a fairly successful ban on the use of chemical weapons, and stockpiles are low or nonexistent. It would be good if such bans could be extended to other weapons through mutual agreement. It would be bad if the use of chemical weapons suddenly became acceptable.
IMV that is a really good reason why we should be against their use.
Plenty of that applies to landmines too...
Which is why the world has made efforts to ban land mines. Their effects are not quite the same as gas, though - and certainly not the 'worst' gasses.
Yes he’s Pablo’s brother - so there’s an element of whitewashing, but he was also witness to it all. The incredible rise to incredible money and power - and then the fall into awful violence, and his pathetic death
What is obvious is that Pablo Escobar was a genius. Tremendous organisational skill and amazing innovative foresight. Also highly cultured - sang opera, recited memorised poetry. Huge admirer of the USA (yes) and its enterprising culture
Also from a dirt poor background, yet he was showing incredible leadership skills by the age of 16. Boundless confidence, intense charisma, the ability to remain lucid and calm when everyone
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 (and where Corbynism was always strongest) but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
First time buyers don't buy a home at the average price in their area. They buy at the lower end of the market - a 2-bed terrace or a flat.
The average home, let's say a 3/4 bed semi, is what they move to later, when they are earning more and have equity from the first property.
My first house bought with my future wife as a couple was a good sized 3 bed semi in Whitchurch, Cardiff. It was a doer upper and I paid £62k 33 years ago. The cost was circa 2.5 times my gross salary. I was 29. That house would now breach the half a million mark so I would need a £200,000 salary on the same terms. I doubt many buyers aged 29 could touch it these days. Mind you interest rates were North of 15%.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Al Qaeda linked rebels HTS dominate the rebels overall.
Assad will try and hold the Alawite heartlands on the coast and Lebanese border and parts of Damascus with Russian mercenary and Hezbollah support. Alawites will also fight for Assad as he is one of their own
On this matter, you've been wrong about pretty much everything. You would be best served by writing "I think" before things.
Not at all, as you will soon discover if the Islamist militant rebels take over and Syria becomes the biggest base for jihadi terrorists in the world
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
Al Qaeda linked rebels HTS dominate the rebels overall.
Assad will try and hold the Alawite heartlands on the coast and Lebanese border and parts of Damascus with Russian mercenary and Hezbollah support. Alawites will also fight for Assad as he is one of their own
On this matter, you've been wrong about pretty much everything. You would be best served by writing "I think" before things.
Not at all, as you will soon discover if the Islamist militant rebels take over and Syria becomes the biggest base for jihadi terrorists in the world
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
But in your happy scenario home ownership becomes impossible in southern England because people are deemed to be 'rich' at £50k, and so deserve taxing more, before they can become homeowners.
Not a basis for a happy socioeconomic system nor a successful one.
No, for as I said 2 full time earners on £35 each can afford the average UK home, let alone the cheaper average UK starter home.
Only in London and the very poshest parts of the home counties are 2 full time earners on £50k each needed to get a mortgage for a property
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
But in your happy scenario home ownership becomes impossible in southern England because people are deemed to be 'rich' at £50k, and so deserve taxing more, before they can become homeowners.
Not a basis for a happy socioeconomic system nor a successful one.
People starting out do not need to buy an average house.
If there is insistence, then it is "won't" not "can't".
They don't need to if there is a functioning housing 'ladder'.
In previous generations people could buy a small house in their 20s and then trade up to a bigger house in their 30s.
But possibly a lot harder to do so now because of various reasons:
House prices increasing at a faster rate than earnings. Interest rate only mortgages meaning people do not increase their equity. Higher taxes from student debt repayments. Higher relative costs of housing transactions, stamp duty etc.
For many people the house type/size/price they buy first might become the house type/size/price they have for life.
Inheritances perhaps being the 'best' game changer in allowing them to climb a rung of the housing ladder.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Yes, which means the population will vote for big tax rises on the rich and deportation of immigrants claiming welfare and using public services taken to its extreme ie a combination of far left and far right.
As overall the average voter is neither rich nor an immigrant
There aren't enough rich willing to be taxed heavily enough.
There aren't enough poor immigrants willing to be deported.
The financial burden will be shared across everyone.
Which is why you will not be getting your state pension until you are 70.
Globally the average voter will vote for the rich to be squeezed until the pips squeek across the western world and for mass deportations for immigrants before they even consider voting for higher taxes for themselves and lower spending on the services they use for themselves.
If all the centre right offer is slashing spending on key services and all the centre liberal left offer is higher taxes on the average voter and small businesses and neither do anything to control immigration it is little surprise if the populist nationalist right and populist hard left both surge in the gap offering what most voters want
People can vote for what they want.
But people will get what can be afforded.
So it comes back to what will happen:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
Many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
You keep saying this but voters will vote for what they want and for what doesn't effect them ie tax rises on anyone earning over £50 k and massive tax rises on those earning over £100k and with assets over a million.
Plus mass deportations of immigrants
And do you think that people earning over £50k, ie only double minimum wage, regard themselves as the 'rich' ?
What sort of house could someone earning £50k afford in Epping Forest ?
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
£50k+a year iputs you in the top 10% of voters by personal income in the UK, it is voters earning between £20k and £50k who decide elections
As I said many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes themselves and/or the 'undeserving' they want to cut services on includes themselves.
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
Average UK house price is £298,083, so between £60k and £70k household income ie £30k to £35k each for a couple getting a joint mortgage would get you home ownership. So still less than £50k which equates to £100k household income which might be required for home ownership in London, average property price £545,439 but not most of the rest of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
But in your happy scenario home ownership becomes impossible in southern England because people are deemed to be 'rich' at £50k, and so deserve taxing more, before they can become homeowners.
Not a basis for a happy socioeconomic system nor a successful one.
No, for as I said 2 full time earners on £35 each can afford the average UK home, let alone the cheaper average UK starter home.
Only in London and the very poshest parts of the home counties are 2 full time earners on £50k each needed to get a mortgage for a property
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
UK warns Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against insurgent forces seizing territory across the country. FCDO Middle East Minister, Hamish Falconer, said any use of chemical weapons by either regime or Russian forces would be “intolerable”. 1/2
Oh good, we’ve found Sir Keir’s Hail Mary
The Syrian Government has tended to use barrel bombs with chlorine in them, dropped I think from helicopters. It's useful when insurgent forces are hiding in the basements of civilian facilities. The chlorine is released flows downwards, and it causes intolerable coughing, breathing difficulties and panic (though not death it would appear) and the insurgents pour out of their hidey holes and can be dispatched with no harm to the civilians therein, and no destruction to the building. A 'chemical weapon' that seems infinitely preferable to me than turning cities into moonscapes Russia style. But it's all part of the grinding PR machine of war.
Hawkish elements of the US state (along with Turkey) seem highly rattled that Trump might take their ball away. Oh well.
So you're for chemical weapons? Think how bad chlorine is for people who stand on their head.
I'm not for any weapons, but it is foolish to think that a weapon is instantly more devillish because it has the word chemical in it. That's for stupid people. I could be wrong, but on balance using these barrel bombs appears to be slightly more humane than using the explosive variety.
Maybe, depends if you find choking to death with corrupted lungs more humane then crushed under the rubble.
I do think it is wilful ignorance to believe chlorine is some how a selective weapon. These unharmed civilians are also not in basements or hidey holes? And have you not seen the videos of Aleppo post war? The only place that looks worse is Gaza.
Chlorine has many debilitating effects at a non-fatal level. Of course it isn't selective, any civilians in the same spaces as the insurgents will also be in harm's way, but its direction of flow seems useful in the sense that the insurgents will often be in the basements (the safest place) with the civilians above. On balance, if I were in a building taken over by insurgents, I would far prefer the authorities to use chlorine initially rather than blowing the building to bits, for obvious reasons.
Yes he’s Pablo’s brother - so there’s an element of whitewashing, but he was also witness to it all. The incredible rise to incredible money and power - and then the fall into awful violence, and his pathetic death
What is obvious is that Pablo Escobar was a genius. Tremendous organisational skill and amazing innovative foresight. Also highly cultured - sang opera, recited memorised poetry. Huge admirer of the USA (yes) and its enterprising culture
Also from a dirt poor background, yet he was showing incredible leadership skills by the age of 16. Boundless confidence, intense charisma, the ability to remain lucid and calm when everyone
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
Anyone been following the Bovaer stushie, the additive to cattle feed that reduces methane production? It seemed to be making steady progress to general acceptance but now appears to have blown up into an antivax style social media thing with people pouring affected milk down the drain etc. Afaics there’s not a shred of evidence suggesting it has had a deleterious effect on cattle or milk consumers.
A lot of folk seem on a paranoid, enraged hair-trigger atm.
Yes he’s Pablo’s brother - so there’s an element of whitewashing, but he was also witness to it all. The incredible rise to incredible money and power - and then the fall into awful violence, and his pathetic death
What is obvious is that Pablo Escobar was a genius. Tremendous organisational skill and amazing innovative foresight. Also highly cultured - sang opera, recited memorised poetry. Huge admirer of the USA (yes) and its enterprising culture
Also from a dirt poor background, yet he was showing incredible leadership skills by the age of 16. Boundless confidence, intense charisma, the ability to remain lucid and calm when everyone
I wish you would stop promoting your own work!
Apols. There was a point to my comment - it got cut off by bad signal in remote Colombia!
My comment on Escobar ended like this:
He was Patriotic and determined, generous with poor people like him. Fell into great evil because of his business. Not intrinsically evil?
He would have made an outstanding Colombian president if he had only made it in politics rather than drugs. He could have transformed the country and maybe all Latin America
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
That's not what I'm doing. I'm asking HYUFD for evidence for his assertions in order to understand the situation better and the motivations of different actors. It looks like no-one is willing to fight for Assad. HYUFD says the Alawites will. The evidence for this is old.
That's all.
We'll see what HTS are like in the coming days and years, for good or ill.
Anyone been following the Bovaer stushie, the additive to cattle feed that reduces methane production? It seemed to be making steady progress to general acceptance but now appears to have blown up into an antivax style social media thing with people pouring affected milk down the drain etc. Afaics there’s not a shred of evidence suggesting it has had a deleterious effect on cattle or milk consumers.
A lot of folk seem on a paranoid, enraged hair-trigger atm.
Clearly a conspiracy. Walked through a field the other day and I could swear I heard one of them say "Four stomachs good. One stomach bad." under its warm cuddy breath.
Looks like it's the end of the Assad regime in Syria, a middle east constant for the last 50+ years.
Yep all over looking at the dynamic here. At least for Homs and Damascus. Maybe there will be pockets of loyal Asad supporters in the west but I suspect they will have to cave with Russian withdrawing and their connection to Iran and Hezbollah cut off.
Looks like it's the end of the Assad regime in Syria, a middle east constant for the last 50+ years.
I have to say this is probably bad news, whatever regime replace Assad is going to be worse. There's no way things will get better with a rag tag of jihadis and Islamists in charge.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
That's not what I'm doing. I'm asking HYUFD for evidence for his assertions in order to understand the situation better and the motivations of different actors. It looks like no-one is willing to fight for Assad. HYUFD says the Alawites will. The evidence for this is old.
That's all.
We'll see what HTS are like in the coming days and years, for good or ill.
We should remember that HTS do not control all of Syria, by a long shot. Even now. Large swathes are held, and have been freed, by other groups.
HTS have not done this alone: how many of the other rebel groups will be willing to be 'under' HTS's leadership? Given how these groups formed, perhaps not many. al_Jolani (HTS's leader) has talked about that issue before and has ideas that *may* work - basically instead of a unified country, a kind-of federation. But I doubt it.
On the Planning Permission mentioned by Horse in Chingford, I looked it up and here's the site.
It's a big detached house in an area of terraces. A dream site.
They could have gone a LOT more dense, with something like a courtyard of 8-10 apartments or a mix built out to the periphery most of the way round. It's number 19. It faces an entire row of 150ft back gardens across the alley - any sensible developer will be looking to but some of those and double or treble their site area. But potential PROW complications.
I'd call that a missed opportunity.
The last sold price for that house was 230k in 1999.
It could sell on with PP and be densified by the buyer.
On topic: Rishi's legacy is going to be worse than Trusses.
Turns out useless managerialism combined with a sprinkling of bonkers policies about smoking doesn't cut the mustard
Sunak made mistakes - as Chancellor, as Prime Minister and as Conservative leader.
But the damage was done by the Downing Street parties, Truss cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and the ocean of sleaze.
The rot was too intrinsic within the Conservatives - they deserved to lose and to lose big.
I say this as someone who voted for them and wants them to learn from their mistakes and misbehaviour.
No it wasn't. The polling trajectory is quite clear. If this were correct, we'd have seen severe drops under Boris, worse under Truss, and Sunak steadying things a bit but falling to mount a significant recovery.
Instead we saw reasonably good polling for Boris until the Sunakites stabbed him, followed by a crash in polling after Truss's minibudget, followed by a cautious recovery when Sunak came in promising to steady the ship, followed by a faltering of that recovery and a slow, steady decline, eventually equalling the worst of Truss. Sunak owns that fully.
You have your political opinion and that's fine, but please don't try to misrepresent the facts on a political betting forum where everyone knows what happened.
Boris destroyed himself by repeatedly breaking his own lockdown rules and then pointlessly trying to protect sleaze merchants such as Patterson and Pincher.
Truss destroyed herself by cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and putting people's homes and mortgages at risk.
The damage was done. And it couldn't be repaired whoever was Conservative leader.
Could Sunak have done better as Conservative leader ?
Yes. But even if he had done, and the other Conservative politicians had behaved themselves, they would still have lost.
You're not listening. We have frequent opinion polling throughout the entire era, and the polls DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR THEORY.
On the one hand, I think Farage could well be the single most likely person to be next Prime Minister.
On the other, a 25% change seems pretty high, given (a) Reform's structural disadvantages, and (b) that the election is still four and a half years away, and (c) Farage is not the springest of chickens.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
On the Planning Permission mentioned by Horse in Chingford, I looked it up and here's the site.
It's a big detached house in an area of terraces. A dream site.
They could have gone a LOT more dense, with something like a courtyard of 8-10 apartments or a mix built out to the periphery most of the way round. It's number 19. It faces an entire row of 150ft back gardens across the alley - any sensible developer will be looking to but some of those and double or treble their site area. But potential PROW complications.
I'd call that a missed opportunity.
The last sold price for that house was 230k in 1999.
It could sell on with PP and be densified by the buyer.
The residents there seem to love their end-of-garden garages, even the houses which have a front drive. I suspect that might make buying up the gardens tough.
On the Planning Permission mentioned by Horse in Chingford, I looked it up and here's the site.
It's a big detached house in an area of terraces. A dream site.
They could have gone a LOT more dense, with something like a courtyard of 8-10 apartments or a mix built out to the periphery most of the way round. It's number 19. It faces an entire row of 150ft back gardens across the alley - any sensible developer will be looking to but some of those and double or treble their site area. But potential PROW complications.
I'd call that a missed opportunity.
The last sold price for that house was 230k in 1999.
It could sell on with PP and be densified by the buyer.
Looks as it in street view ... good grief, the road has more potholes than the Mendips! Maybe one explanation they're so sensitive about further traffic.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
An Elizabeth line worker has died following an assault at an east London railway station. British Transport Police (BTP) was called to Ilford station at about 20:50 GMT on Wednesday to reports of a serious assault.
The 61-year-old man was taken to hospital with serious head injuries and later died.
Ayodele Jamgbadi, 28, of Kingston Road, Ilford, was charged with grievous bodily harm, affray and possession of a prohibited offensive weapon in a private place.
BTP said its detectives would apply to amend the indictment to reflect the man's death.
At the risk of being proved wrong (any columnist’s worst nightmare), I predict that Starmer’s own personality will not get him to the end of this Parliament.
Then even less likely that Farage or Badenoch are next PM, and they both remain screaming lays
Why? A new leader isn't going to turn things around. They might be less of a toe curling embarrassment, but the damage is largely done.
The bet is next Prime Minister, not Prime Minister after the next election. Thus, if Starmer does not stay to contest the next election, the next Prime Minister will be a Labour MP.
I'd agree that the value in this market is on the Labour MPs.
Three main scenarios from here:
A. Labour continue to struggle, and push Starmer overboard before GE2029. Next PM is red.
B. Starmer stays on and loses in 2029. Next PM isn't red.
C. Starmer wins in 2028/9 and retires to muted appreciation a couple of years after that. Next PM is red.
I know Labour don't ditch leaders like the Conservatives do, but B doesn't seem that likely. (And the numbers sort of reflect that. Nigel or Kemi combined is under 50% chance, even with the mug punters boost.)
About right I think. Within those boundaries, and allowing for black swans, the next PM race is a 50 horse steeplechase in the mud, not a 6 runner 5 furlong on the flat. Whoever is the favourite should be at longish odds - something like 8/1 or longer. The next PM may be someone we have hardly heard of, it is just possible they are not even in the HoC at this moment. (Miliband D would be easily the best Labour candidate though he is now 59).
Of those outside parliament, Andy Burnham is far and away the most likely. He is generally thought to be doing a good job in Greater Manchester, is authentically Northern and has a lot of support. David Miliband has no infrastructure.
Don't you find Burnham to be one of the most annoying politicians anywhere in the UK? Labour need to be looking to the future. I doubt he will get a look in on account of the fact that he is the wrong gender but Darren Jones seems to have Blair's charisma and self assurance but without Blair's dreadful earnestness.
In May of this year Burnham won his 3rd term as Mayor of Greater Manchester, with 63% of the vote and won every constituency within it, so clearly has a lot of support.
I am not suggesting that he would be the best choice, but could step down as Mayor in 2028 at the end of this term and be back in Parliament. He is far and away the most likely successor outside parliament, and being outside of parliament does help him look like a new broom, not tainted by Starmer/Reeves.
His stuff on buses is very good. A public good - so everyone can benefit*, an investment - so boosts growth, and users are primarily from lower income deciles - so improves services for the kind of people Labour cares about most.
It's the kind of policy that brings people together, rather than chopping us up into taxpayers and claimants, public and private sector, white and non-white.
*Including indirectly by reducing congestion for commercial and private drivers
When you have a decent bus service in a sector not served by trains, the users start extending into the middle and upper deciles in urban areas, as is well shown by the Edinburgh commuter runs. They'd be even more reliable if it weren't for cars. I really dislike the idiots who persist in queuing for the bypass slip roads even when it's been announced the bypass is u/s, and blocking the radials for the rest of us.
Bus services require a critical mass of people to allow a frequent enough service that people will use it.
A regular 10 service every 10 minutes and people just turn up and go, anything beyond about 15 minutes results in people having to think about it and passes some potential customers to using their car.
Agree. Any bus service that requires consultation of a timetable is a failure, and missing your bus during commuting times should never leave you more than 10 minutes late for work.
That's why I advocate a big bang approach to buses - none of this piecemeal additional service here and there. Have the bravery to go all in on a fully comprehensive network.
Back when I lived in Wiltshire, a local taxi company owner proposed using Priuses to create a higher frequency - 4 per hour - bus service. On routes that had about 1 bus every 2 hours.
The buses were empty, of course.
His theory was that if you start getting people onto a “bus” it would grow from there. Bigger vehicles at the popular times etc….
His side of it, was that it would subsidise his taxi business.
Will we see Reeves ditched at next reshuffle in an attempt to save Starmer. Let her take the blame for the first few months of technocratic nothing and failings?
It's a rough old trade.
But for who? And does that mean ditching policies?
I just can’t see how SKS becomes more popular if he does a U-turn now,
Whoever replaces her - and you are right it is really not obvious who that would be - will have to ditch the cut to WFA on day one. They also need to be far bolder. They have a massive majority - seize this opportunity to finally sort out local gov finance and council tax for example.
My gut feeling with the WFA, is they will tweak it next year or just cancel the cut as you said.
But I have to be honest, I accept it’s not popular but I find it hard to disagree with this policy. I mean, why were so many people getting it?
The mistake was in not getting rid of WFA for everyone.
By allowing those on pension credit to keep WFA it has reduced savings to miniscule levels (as more will now claim pension credit), created another financial cliff edge, discouraged people saving for their old age and still embittered ten million oldies.
An easy, effective, easy to administer option would be a tweak to Council Tax to give every property where bill payer is a pensioner a discount on Council Tax. Could exempt higher level council tax bands
Simple implementation
Government then covers Council shortfall with direct payment to Council
Better still administer longer term via Great British Energy who seek to get best rates with selective Energy Suppliers passed on and recommend recommend for all.
So you're suggesting lower council taxes for oldies even though oldies receive proportionally more of the council spending.
This country suffers from intergenerational inequality and you want to make it worse ?
As the population ages, inevitably the pendulum has to swing and non pensioners have to pay proportionately more.
We do need a 30 year national plan to resolve this with cross party support.
If you don't accept this logic you'll need to explain how we fund NHS and Social Care increased funding needed for aging population
Prevention is cheaper and better than cure.
Everyone needs to contribute:
Taxes need to be increased on property and the rich. Services need to be cut on oldies and the poor. Workers need to increase their productivity and have their state pensions delayed.
No exceptions.
Not oldies, not public sector workers, not the poor.
Everyone needs to lose out and to be seen to be losing out.
And find a political party willing to risk such a platform let alone be able to win many votes with it
It will be imposed by governments or the financial markets.
Some of it is already happening and other parts, for example increasing the state retirement age, will happen soon.
No it won't, no government or financial market can impose for long what a majority of the population reject. Italy tried it briefly with a technocrat PM, ended up with a populist right landslide for Meloni.
Macron has tried it recently and just seen a surge for Melenchon's block on far left and Le Pen's block on far right
The population will get what the population can afford.
When the limits of affordability are reached the only way some can get more is to take it from others.
Well quite: and no government has really yet been honest about the costs of an ageing population.
When governments say...
"you're all going to need to work longer, for less pension, and we need to find a way to cut healthcare spending, and make sure that we are able to provide services for increasing numbers of old people who cannot look after themselves"
Then voters say...
"that sounds rubbish! the other guys are promising tax cuts and we'll vote for them!"
On topic: Rishi's legacy is going to be worse than Trusses.
Turns out useless managerialism combined with a sprinkling of bonkers policies about smoking doesn't cut the mustard
Sunak made mistakes - as Chancellor, as Prime Minister and as Conservative leader.
But the damage was done by the Downing Street parties, Truss cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and the ocean of sleaze.
The rot was too intrinsic within the Conservatives - they deserved to lose and to lose big.
I say this as someone who voted for them and wants them to learn from their mistakes and misbehaviour.
No it wasn't. The polling trajectory is quite clear. If this were correct, we'd have seen severe drops under Boris, worse under Truss, and Sunak steadying things a bit but falling to mount a significant recovery.
Instead we saw reasonably good polling for Boris until the Sunakites stabbed him, followed by a crash in polling after Truss's minibudget, followed by a cautious recovery when Sunak came in promising to steady the ship, followed by a faltering of that recovery and a slow, steady decline, eventually equalling the worst of Truss. Sunak owns that fully.
You have your political opinion and that's fine, but please don't try to misrepresent the facts on a political betting forum where everyone knows what happened.
Boris destroyed himself by repeatedly breaking his own lockdown rules and then pointlessly trying to protect sleaze merchants such as Patterson and Pincher.
Truss destroyed herself by cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and putting people's homes and mortgages at risk.
The damage was done. And it couldn't be repaired whoever was Conservative leader.
Could Sunak have done better as Conservative leader ?
Yes. But even if he had done, and the other Conservative politicians had behaved themselves, they would still have lost.
You're not listening. We have frequent opinion polling throughout the entire era, and the polls DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR THEORY.
Its not a theory it was the reality.
You have to deal with it.
Instead you seem to be fantasising about some scenario where everyone ignores Boris breaking his own lockdown rules and then trying to pointlessly protect the likes of Patterson and Pincher.
You need to accept that Boris destroyed himself and thereby damaged the Conservatives.
And then Truss destroyed herself and made the damage terminal.
From then on the Conservatives were headed for defeat, only the scale of the defeat remained to be decided.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
I've never said it would get better, but it's also not very good to ignore Assad's regime and their crimes
If you read my posts on this, much depends on what happens next: HTS does not control the entire country, and I doubt has the ability to take power from the other regional groups (who are not all Islamist by a long shot). So what happens? You also need to throw Turkey into the mix, and its feelings towards the Kurds.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
Oh, it's a choice between the bloody awful and the really bloody awful.
The most likely outcome now is pretty shit. But it is possible - albeit not likely - that the thread posted by @Nigelb yesterday is correct, and the new leadership realizes they need to keep their loose coalition of anti-Assad forces at least vaguely together.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
On the Planning Permission mentioned by Horse in Chingford, I looked it up and here's the site.
It's a big detached house in an area of terraces. A dream site.
They could have gone a LOT more dense, with something like a courtyard of 8-10 apartments or a mix built out to the periphery most of the way round. It's number 19. It faces an entire row of 150ft back gardens across the alley - any sensible developer will be looking to but some of those and double or treble their site area. But potential PROW complications.
I'd call that a missed opportunity.
The last sold price for that house was 230k in 1999.
It could sell on with PP and be densified by the buyer.
The residents there seem to love their end-of-garden garages, even the houses which have a front drive. I suspect that might make buying up the gardens tough.
Probably.
If you have time and money you buy and flip the houses one by one over a number of years - the general appreciation in properties protects the capital, and as a rental investment they could supply a reasonable income.
Enhanced by leverage.
If one owns them all in sequence then the PROW rights can be extinguished one by one, or altogether at the end.
But the risk is that someone notices the potential, and you end up being held to ransom by a refusenik or two , and have to stuff their mouths with gold. The core skills are subtlety and keeping stum.
On balance just doing the immediate scheme may be better.
On topic: Rishi's legacy is going to be worse than Trusses.
Turns out useless managerialism combined with a sprinkling of bonkers policies about smoking doesn't cut the mustard
Sunak made mistakes - as Chancellor, as Prime Minister and as Conservative leader.
But the damage was done by the Downing Street parties, Truss cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and the ocean of sleaze.
The rot was too intrinsic within the Conservatives - they deserved to lose and to lose big.
I say this as someone who voted for them and wants them to learn from their mistakes and misbehaviour.
No it wasn't. The polling trajectory is quite clear. If this were correct, we'd have seen severe drops under Boris, worse under Truss, and Sunak steadying things a bit but falling to mount a significant recovery.
Instead we saw reasonably good polling for Boris until the Sunakites stabbed him, followed by a crash in polling after Truss's minibudget, followed by a cautious recovery when Sunak came in promising to steady the ship, followed by a faltering of that recovery and a slow, steady decline, eventually equalling the worst of Truss. Sunak owns that fully.
You have your political opinion and that's fine, but please don't try to misrepresent the facts on a political betting forum where everyone knows what happened.
Boris destroyed himself by repeatedly breaking his own lockdown rules and then pointlessly trying to protect sleaze merchants such as Patterson and Pincher.
Truss destroyed herself by cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and putting people's homes and mortgages at risk.
The damage was done. And it couldn't be repaired whoever was Conservative leader.
Could Sunak have done better as Conservative leader ?
Yes. But even if he had done, and the other Conservative politicians had behaved themselves, they would still have lost.
You're not listening. We have frequent opinion polling throughout the entire era, and the polls DO NOT SUPPORT YOUR THEORY.
Its not a theory it was the reality.
You have to deal with it.
Instead you seem to be fantasising about some scenario where everyone ignores Boris breaking his own lockdown rules and then trying to pointlessly protect the likes of Patterson and Pincher.
You need to accept that Boris destroyed himself and thereby damaged the Conservatives.
And then Truss destroyed herself and made the damage terminal.
From then on the Conservatives were headed for defeat, only the scale of the defeat remained to be decided.
This is absolutely spot on. And the idea that - had Boris stayed - that there would not have been further damaging scandals caused by the fact that (a) Boris is incapable of telling the truth, and (b) thinking the rules do not apply to him, is absolute fantasy.
He had lost the confidence of his party. The Conservatives were beginning to lose byelections in incredibly safe seats.
When you combine that with the fact that (thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and post Covid inflation) wages were not rising as fast as prices, then the inevitable consequence was that the Conservatives were going to get a massive kicking.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
I've never said it would get better, but it's also not very good to ignore Assad's regime and their crimes
If you read my posts on this, much depends on what happens next: HTS does not control the entire country, and I doubt has the ability to take power from the other regional groups (who are not all Islamist by a long shot). So what happens? You also need to throw Turkey into the mix, and its feelings towards the Kurds.
You seem to be happy for Assad to go away, fine, but with no clue as to what replaces that regime. This worked out terribly for the west in Libya which was a stable (though awful) dictatorship and now it's a hellscape of jihadis and Islamists who have made it terrible and a sanctuary for terrorists and people trafficking.
As much as I don't like Assad, the prospect of his replacement is extremely worrying, we're going to get another wave of refugees in Europe, more terrorists and more destabilisation of European countries due to this. If anything can out Marine Le Pen in the Elysee it's 2 million more Muslim refugees entering Europe.
UK warns Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against insurgent forces seizing territory across the country. FCDO Middle East Minister, Hamish Falconer, said any use of chemical weapons by either regime or Russian forces would be “intolerable”. 1/2
Oh good, we’ve found Sir Keir’s Hail Mary
The Syrian Government has tended to use barrel bombs with chlorine in them, dropped I think from helicopters. It's useful when insurgent forces are hiding in the basements of civilian facilities. The chlorine is released flows downwards, and it causes intolerable coughing, breathing difficulties and panic (though not death it would appear) and the insurgents pour out of their hidey holes and can be dispatched with no harm to the civilians therein, and no destruction to the building. A 'chemical weapon' that seems infinitely preferable to me than turning cities into moonscapes Russia style. But it's all part of the grinding PR machine of war.
Hawkish elements of the US state (along with Turkey) seem highly rattled that Trump might take their ball away. Oh well.
Sounds good. But what sort of chlorine is it that it can distinguish between insurgents and civilians? I only studied chemistry to O level so never came across such clever elements.
Why are chemical weapons bad? A primer, for pro-Russian idiots.
TL:dr; for many reasons.
Bullets and bombs are generally aimed, especially if to be effective. Once expended, its danger has generally gone (which is one reason why delayed-action bombs, or ones that do not explode properly, such as cluster bombs, are so dangerous and are frowned upon). But even cluster bombs can be better aimed than a gas cloud.
A cloud of toxic gas is very different. Once released, it continues being dangerous for sometimes considerable periods; it can persist in rooms or enclosed spaces, endangering rescuers. Wind can blow it away to other areas.
It is indiscriminate; a gas cloud has no way of knowing who, or what, it is attacking - unlike a targeted bomb or bullet.
The gasses vary massively, from simple ones such as chlorine, to nerve agents. They all can have long-term effects on the health of people subjected to them. Rescuers have little idea what gas has been used, and what they need to do to protect themselves, hindering rescue of the injured.
We did have an expert on such matters on here...
But most of all IMV: in an ideal world, we would have no weapons and live in peace. We have a fairly successful ban on the use of chemical weapons, and stockpiles are low or nonexistent. It would be good if such bans could be extended to other weapons through mutual agreement. It would be bad if the use of chemical weapons suddenly became acceptable.
IMV that is a really good reason why we should be against their use.
It's been argued by somebody who knows more military history than I do (https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ ) that the main reason that there's a fairly broad international consensus on not using chemical weapons is that fundamentally for a modern style military they are just not very good and conventional weaponry gives you much better bang for the buck, so to speak. This consensus is therefore very unlikely to be spreadable to other kinds of weapons (e.g. cluster munitions), because the major powers are happy to be against weaponry they'll never use (and to strongarm smaller powers into going along) but less willing to rule out stuff they might need.
Conversely, there has been use of chemical weapons by less-than-modern militaries in the region back to the Iran-Iraq war; this has not caused them to become more widely popular with other armies, and I don't think more use in Syria at this point is likely to have any tendency to spread their use to other places and armies that weren't already using them.
Also, I doubt the UK government making a statement on this will cause anybody in the region to take a blind bit of notice, so it's doubly pointless.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
We're not replacing anyone with anyone. Syrians, with some amount of support from Turkey, are the ones doing this.
At the moment a lot of Syrians seem happy about it, and good luck to them. They'll need it. The very early signs are that HTS are nowhere near as bad as ISIS. If it had been ISIS making these advances then twitter would be awash with beheading videos by now. Obviously they might turn out to be plenty bad enough.
If they surprise on the upside then there will be a case to be made for some cautious engagement. We'll see. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I always have a bias towards optimism, and I'm aware I may be disappointed.
On the Planning Permission mentioned by Horse in Chingford, I looked it up and here's the site.
It's a big detached house in an area of terraces. A dream site.
They could have gone a LOT more dense, with something like a courtyard of 8-10 apartments or a mix built out to the periphery most of the way round. It's number 19. It faces an entire row of 150ft back gardens across the alley - any sensible developer will be looking to but some of those and double or treble their site area. But potential PROW complications.
I'd call that a missed opportunity.
The last sold price for that house was 230k in 1999.
It could sell on with PP and be densified by the buyer.
The residents there seem to love their end-of-garden garages, even the houses which have a front drive. I suspect that might make buying up the gardens tough.
That's the deal.
If offered £50k-70k and a better, new garage 25m nearer for the bottom half of the 50m garden, some would take it. It's a judgement call. A house or small bungalow will easily fit in that space, since by definition it is the width of a house. That's what small developers optimise.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
Oh, it's a choice between the bloody awful and the really bloody awful.
The most likely outcome now is pretty shit. But it is possible - albeit not likely - that the thread posted by @Nigelb yesterday is correct, and the new leadership realizes they need to keep their loose coalition of anti-Assad forces at least vaguely together.
We shall see.
We should have backed Assad way back when and just done the dirty on the FSA to keep Assad in power. We'd have kept him in our circle of influence rather than having him run off to Putin and Iran. We pushed our ideals and culture of democracy onto a region that doesn't want it. Even these replacements will never have free elections. Anyone who thinks otherwise or that Syria will become a new democratic nation with proper representation of all people is kidding themselves. We're going to end up with Islamists and jihadis in charge, Syria will export terrorism into the west and across the region against our allies and it will become a hotbed of people trafficking into Europe and our illegal immigration issue will worsen.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
I've never said it would get better, but it's also not very good to ignore Assad's regime and their crimes
If you read my posts on this, much depends on what happens next: HTS does not control the entire country, and I doubt has the ability to take power from the other regional groups (who are not all Islamist by a long shot). So what happens? You also need to throw Turkey into the mix, and its feelings towards the Kurds.
You seem to be happy for Assad to go away, fine, but with no clue as to what replaces that regime. This worked out terribly for the west in Libya which was a stable (though awful) dictatorship and now it's a hellscape of jihadis and Islamists who have made it terrible and a sanctuary for terrorists and people trafficking.
As much as I don't like Assad, the prospect of his replacement is extremely worrying, we're going to get another wave of refugees in Europe, more terrorists and more destabilisation of European countries due to this. If anything can out Marine Le Pen in the Elysee it's 2 million more Muslim refugees entering Europe.
If things go well some Syrian refugees will return. That was looking very unlikely while Assad remained in power and the civil war remained unresolved.
It's a fair metric for whether Assad's fall was a positive step. If more refugees result then that's a pretty clear sign it was not. If refugees start to return then that's an equally clear sign that what follows is an improvement.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
I've never said it would get better, but it's also not very good to ignore Assad's regime and their crimes
If you read my posts on this, much depends on what happens next: HTS does not control the entire country, and I doubt has the ability to take power from the other regional groups (who are not all Islamist by a long shot). So what happens? You also need to throw Turkey into the mix, and its feelings towards the Kurds.
You seem to be happy for Assad to go away, fine, but with no clue as to what replaces that regime. This worked out terribly for the west in Libya which was a stable (though awful) dictatorship and now it's a hellscape of jihadis and Islamists who have made it terrible and a sanctuary for terrorists and people trafficking.
As much as I don't like Assad, the prospect of his replacement is extremely worrying, we're going to get another wave of refugees in Europe, more terrorists and more destabilisation of European countries due to this. If anything can out Marine Le Pen in the Elysee it's 2 million more Muslim refugees entering Europe.
Nobody locally is willing to fight for Assad, so it’s all moot what we might think.
A couple of thousand Syrian Army soldiers have crossed into Iraq and surrendered there. Not seeing much sign of resistance from the Syrian Army today. Can Assad still make it out? Will anyone fight for him to make a last stand?
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
The Alawites will, as Assad is one of their own and half of them will be massacred if the Islamist militant rebels take over.
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Do you have any evidence for your assertion that the Alawites will be massacred if the rebels take over?
That was 11 years ago and involved ISIL. It's not very strong evidence.
PBers doing PR for Islamists again. Someone pass the sick bag.
How do you think we all feel after all your PR for Putin's evils on here? You must have generated an ocean of vomit.
Do you really think things will get better in Syria with a bunch of jihadis and Islamists in charge? You can dress HTS as much as you like but we're replacing a known enemy with predictable behaviour with an unknown enemy with unpredictable behaviour. How do you think it's going to play out for Syria's minorities with a bunch of Islamists in power? Last time ISIS had territory Yazidi women were turned into sex slaves and sold all across the Arabic world. How will this be any different?
I've never said it would get better, but it's also not very good to ignore Assad's regime and their crimes
If you read my posts on this, much depends on what happens next: HTS does not control the entire country, and I doubt has the ability to take power from the other regional groups (who are not all Islamist by a long shot). So what happens? You also need to throw Turkey into the mix, and its feelings towards the Kurds.
You seem to be happy for Assad to go away, fine, but with no clue as to what replaces that regime. This worked out terribly for the west in Libya which was a stable (though awful) dictatorship and now it's a hellscape of jihadis and Islamists who have made it terrible and a sanctuary for terrorists and people trafficking.
As much as I don't like Assad, the prospect of his replacement is extremely worrying, we're going to get another wave of refugees in Europe, more terrorists and more destabilisation of European countries due to this. If anything can out Marine Le Pen in the Elysee it's 2 million more Muslim refugees entering Europe.
We did not cause this destabilisation. The events of the last few weeks were not triggered by the west, but by others. Perversely, Hamas on October 6th, and Putin in 2022, may have been the major triggers. Iran/Hezbollah and Russia have been the forces holding Assad up. Russia's massively weakened, as is Hezbollah. Both need their fighters elsewhere.
I'm also rather sceptical about your immigration fears. The countries that have done the vast majority of work to house Syrian refugees are those adjacent countries such as Turkey and Jordan. We have taken a few tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Turkey has taken over three million; Jordan over half a million. (1)
*If* the new regime is better than Assad (not hard...), then many of those may actually want to return home.
I remember the complaints on here about Cameron's plan to pay those countries housing Syrian refugees, to help them with the costs. Many - especially on the right - vociferously complained about this.
I argued he was right then, and *if* there is another massive outflow of refugees, we should do the same now.
Comments
It ... Did ... Not ... Pass (unmodified).
Quite often a large majority are laid aside because they are not about things that can objected about, and getting a PP through is partly about drawing the potential teeth first. Maybe 80-90% of objections are 57 varieties of "Waaaaaaahhhhh !".
Here the planning committee passed the proposal, which means that it had been evaluated according to law by professionals, and the committee agreed.
So I think Nimby likely to be a fair accusation here, given that the mindset is often "but we HAVE to oppose development, don't we?".
And many people will discover that the 'rich' they want to tax includes anyone who can afford to buy a house in southern England.
That the 'rich' now start at an income level below that, in much/most of the country, needed to have the middle class attribute of home ownership.
A very Corbynite viewpoint.
I do think it is wilful ignorance to believe chlorine is some how a selective weapon. These unharmed civilians are also not in basements or hidey holes? And have you not seen the videos of Aleppo post war? The only place that looks worse is Gaza.
Even if he got in, there's zero chance of him delivering on anything like the expectation created ... just like Trump.
He's Just William aspiring to run the Government.
The real question is whether voters are as crassly stupid and as gullible as Farage seems to think / need.
We can perhaps learn lessons from Trump's non-delivery of promises in the USA, and the extent to which buyers remorse occurs. Trump now has the only thing he wanted, which was to stay out of prison.
He's currently throwing tantrums about the possibility of being tried or sentenced (NY sex abuse case) for charges held over until he is no longer President in 4 years' time.
Carl Emmerson, deputy director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: “Reform UK proposes tax cuts that it estimates would cost nearly £90 billion per year, and spending increases of £50 billion per year. It claims that it would pay for these through £150 billion per year of reductions in other spending, covering public services, debt interest and working-age benefits.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/reform-uk-manifesto-reaction
The people who think it's sufficient to phone a councillor or council officer or simply sound off to a third party, without sending a formal written letter - if necessary by a solicitor* - into the planning process ...
* Not as unreasonable as it might seem. That planning application *included part of my friend's property* - which the developer was obviously planning to take over ... and they didn't know about the proposal: the developer hadn't even sent a next neighbour letter. I urged a solicitor's letter to the planning process, but no ...
And from the story, the original proposal was 4 houses.
Truss destroyed herself by cos-playing mytho-Thatcherism and putting people's homes and mortgages at risk.
The damage was done. And it couldn't be repaired whoever was Conservative leader.
Could Sunak have done better as Conservative leader ?
Yes. But even if he had done, and the other Conservative politicians had behaved themselves, they would still have lost.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cevg9mm2rzgo
The more urgent question is that it seems to me that Labour in truth need about £100 billion pa to deliver the state's part of the bargain + contingencies + defence + black swans, and is about as realistic as Reform when it comes to the realities.
For a terrace they would want a 20m deep plot depth usually, but at 20x10 there's ample room for a house and a drive next to it - subject to unusual layouts. If it was main road they would have to be creative to permit car turning and "exiting in a forward gear".
I also stopped another one where a neighbour wanted to turn his long, thin bungalow on a tight site into 3 one beds for rental. They were under on the private amenity space required for each dwelling.
But I avoided putting my name on that (neighbour had previously harrassed my tenant quite nastily, so I needed to kill his PP without blowback). I knew the Officer would not look until the deadline day, so I phoned him up in advance and asked his advice about how to object to all the things I wanted him to be thinking about, then did not need to put a late objection in because he rejected it for my reasons and others on his assessment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghouta_chemical_attack
Not a basis for a happy socioeconomic system nor a successful one.
If there is insistence, then it is "won't" not "can't".
The average home, let's say a 3/4 bed semi, is what they move to later, when they are earning more and have equity from the first property.
Sunak also tried to future proof the Tories with the early election. He hadn't accounted for disparate voting patterns and the Farage surge, but he tried to tee them up for the win in 2029. History will look on him more favourably than his nearest predecessors.
TL:dr; for many reasons.
Bullets and bombs are generally aimed, especially if to be effective. Once expended, its danger has generally gone (which is one reason why delayed-action bombs, or ones that do not explode properly, such as cluster bombs, are so dangerous and are frowned upon). But even cluster bombs can be better aimed than a gas cloud.
A cloud of toxic gas is very different. Once released, it continues being dangerous for sometimes considerable periods; it can persist in rooms or enclosed spaces, endangering rescuers. Wind can blow it away to other areas.
It is indiscriminate; a gas cloud has no way of knowing who, or what, it is attacking - unlike a targeted bomb or bullet.
The gasses vary massively, from simple ones such as chlorine, to nerve agents. They all can have long-term effects on the health of people subjected to them. Rescuers have little idea what gas has been used, and what they need to do to protect themselves, hindering rescue of the injured.
We did have an expert on such matters on here...
But most of all IMV: in an ideal world, we would have no weapons and live in peace. We have a fairly successful ban on the use of chemical weapons, and stockpiles are low or nonexistent. It would be good if such bans could be extended to other weapons through mutual agreement. It would be bad if the use of chemical weapons suddenly became acceptable.
IMV that is a really good reason why we should be against their use.
Someone was asking about cycling insurance recently (Was it @JosiasJessop ?).
I've just discovered that road.cc have a comparison tool here which include dozens of providers, from about £30 per annum upwards (for me and my under-£1000 bike):
https://insurance.road.cc/bicycle-insurance-ui/?step=1
---------------------
Insurance for cycling.
There are at least 3 options:
1 - Rely on your house contents insurance.
https://x.com/mattwardman/status/1628327909906608129
2 - Get insurance from eg membership of Cycling UK. £50 or so per annum give or take.
3 - Get a standalone policy. From ~£30. road.cc have a tool.
https://insurance.road.cc/bicycle-insurance-ui/?step=1
https://bsky.app/profile/mattwardman.bsky.social/post/3lcpy7glnz22x
The speed at which things have moved in the south has been stunning. It might all be over in Damascus before HTS has taken Homs.
People who are saving for their first home tend to be in their 30s - and it's hard to see how you could class a couple of 30-somethings who had already reached the top quintile of household income as being anything other than rich.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
Escobar by Roberto Escobar
Yes he’s Pablo’s brother - so there’s an element of whitewashing, but he was also witness to it all. The incredible rise to incredible money and power - and then the fall into awful violence, and his pathetic death
What is obvious is that Pablo Escobar was a genius. Tremendous organisational skill and amazing innovative foresight. Also highly cultured - sang opera, recited memorised poetry. Huge admirer of the USA (yes) and its enterprising culture
Also from a dirt poor background, yet he was showing incredible leadership skills by the age of 16. Boundless confidence, intense charisma, the ability to remain lucid and calm when everyone
If Assad has any sense he will arm all the Alawites in the Alawi heartland of the Syrian coast and Lebanese border and Alawi areas of Damascus and get them fighting street to street until more Russian mercenaries and Hezbollah fighters arrive to support them
Only in London and the very poshest parts of the home counties are 2 full time earners on £50k each needed to get a mortgage for a property
https://www.france24.com/en/20131011-syrian-rebels-executed-67-alawite-villagers-hrw-rights-watch
A View to A Kill
Meglamoniacs
In previous generations people could buy a small house in their 20s and then trade up to a bigger house in their 30s.
But possibly a lot harder to do so now because of various reasons:
House prices increasing at a faster rate than earnings.
Interest rate only mortgages meaning people do not increase their equity.
Higher taxes from student debt repayments.
Higher relative costs of housing transactions, stamp duty etc.
For many people the house type/size/price they buy first might become the house type/size/price they have for life.
Inheritances perhaps being the 'best' game changer in allowing them to climb a rung of the housing ladder.
A lot of folk seem on a paranoid, enraged hair-trigger atm.
My comment on Escobar ended like this:
He was Patriotic and determined, generous with poor people like him. Fell into great evil because of his business. Not intrinsically evil?
He would have made an outstanding Colombian president if he had only made it in politics rather than drugs. He could have transformed the country and maybe all Latin America
That's all.
We'll see what HTS are like in the coming days and years, for good or ill.
So he may know a lot about Syria or he may be picking up dodgy sources and reporting them as fact..
(Remember how HYUFD said, just a few days ago, that the Russians would bomb the rebel columns into smithereens?)
https://syria.liveuamap.com/
HTS have not done this alone: how many of the other rebel groups will be willing to be 'under' HTS's leadership? Given how these groups formed, perhaps not many. al_Jolani (HTS's leader) has talked about that issue before and has ideas that *may* work - basically instead of a unified country, a kind-of federation. But I doubt it.
It's a big detached house in an area of terraces. A dream site.
They could have gone a LOT more dense, with something like a courtyard of 8-10 apartments or a mix built out to the periphery most of the way round. It's number 19. It faces an entire row of 150ft back gardens across the alley - any sensible developer will be looking to but some of those and double or treble their site area. But potential PROW complications.
I'd call that a missed opportunity.
The last sold price for that house was 230k in 1999.
It could sell on with PP and be densified by the buyer.
Planning app: https://builtenvironment.walthamforest.gov.uk/planning/index.html?fa=getApplication&id=115806
Maps:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sunnyside+Dr,+London/@51.6326764,-0.0043237,99m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x48761e28f805ab85:0x786212b105afbc84!8m2!3d51.6327618!4d-0.0030794!16s/g/1thq9bk3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MTIwNC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==
So, I'm in two minds about this one.
On the one hand, I think Farage could well be the single most likely person to be next Prime Minister.
On the other, a 25% change seems pretty high, given (a) Reform's structural disadvantages, and (b) that the election is still four and a half years away, and (c) Farage is not the springest of chickens.
An Elizabeth line worker has died following an assault at an east London railway station.
British Transport Police (BTP) was called to Ilford station at about 20:50 GMT on Wednesday to reports of a serious assault.
The 61-year-old man was taken to hospital with serious head injuries and later died.
Ayodele Jamgbadi, 28, of Kingston Road, Ilford, was charged with grievous bodily harm, affray and possession of a prohibited offensive weapon in a private place.
BTP said its detectives would apply to amend the indictment to reflect the man's death.
When governments say...
"you're all going to need to work longer, for less pension, and we need to find a way to cut healthcare spending, and make sure that we are able to provide services for increasing numbers of old people who cannot look after themselves"
Then voters say...
"that sounds rubbish! the other guys are promising tax cuts and we'll vote for them!"
You have to deal with it.
Instead you seem to be fantasising about some scenario where everyone ignores Boris breaking his own lockdown rules and then trying to pointlessly protect the likes of Patterson and Pincher.
You need to accept that Boris destroyed himself and thereby damaged the Conservatives.
And then Truss destroyed herself and made the damage terminal.
From then on the Conservatives were headed for defeat, only the scale of the defeat remained to be decided.
If you read my posts on this, much depends on what happens next: HTS does not control the entire country, and I doubt has the ability to take power from the other regional groups (who are not all Islamist by a long shot). So what happens? You also need to throw Turkey into the mix, and its feelings towards the Kurds.
The most likely outcome now is pretty shit. But it is possible - albeit not likely - that the thread posted by @Nigelb yesterday is correct, and the new leadership realizes they need to keep their loose coalition of anti-Assad forces at least vaguely together.
We shall see.
If you have time and money you buy and flip the houses one by one over a number of years - the general appreciation in properties protects the capital, and as a rental investment they could supply a reasonable income.
Enhanced by leverage.
If one owns them all in sequence then the PROW rights can be extinguished one by one, or altogether at the end.
But the risk is that someone notices the potential, and you end up being held to ransom by a refusenik or two
On balance just doing the immediate scheme may be better.
This is absolutely spot on. And the idea that - had Boris stayed - that there would not have been further damaging scandals caused by the fact that (a) Boris is incapable of telling the truth, and (b) thinking the rules do not apply to him, is absolute fantasy.
He had lost the confidence of his party. The Conservatives were beginning to lose byelections in incredibly safe seats.
When you combine that with the fact that (thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and post Covid inflation) wages were not rising as fast as prices, then the inevitable consequence was that the Conservatives were going to get a massive kicking.
As much as I don't like Assad, the prospect of his replacement is extremely worrying, we're going to get another wave of refugees in Europe, more terrorists and more destabilisation of European countries due to this. If anything can out Marine Le Pen in the Elysee it's 2 million more Muslim refugees entering Europe.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-carried-out-strike-after-attack-eastern-syria-pentagon-says-2024-12-03/
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/us-strikes-iranian-backed-groups-syria-attacks-american-troops/
(There have been unconfirmed reports of lots of other US attacks as well.)
We should remember that Iran has had its sticky fingers supporting Assad, as well as Russia.
Conversely, there has been use of chemical weapons by less-than-modern militaries in the region back to the Iran-Iraq war; this has not caused them to become more widely popular with other armies, and I don't think more use in Syria at this point is likely to have any tendency to spread their use to other places and armies that weren't already using them.
Also, I doubt the UK government making a statement on this will cause anybody in the region to take a blind bit of notice, so it's doubly pointless.
Wonder what the ChiComs are saying about it. If anything.
(Google is ignoring it, of course.)
At the moment a lot of Syrians seem happy about it, and good luck to them. They'll need it. The very early signs are that HTS are nowhere near as bad as ISIS. If it had been ISIS making these advances then twitter would be awash with beheading videos by now. Obviously they might turn out to be plenty bad enough.
If they surprise on the upside then there will be a case to be made for some cautious engagement. We'll see. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I always have a bias towards optimism, and I'm aware I may be disappointed.
If offered £50k-70k and a better, new garage 25m nearer for the bottom half of the 50m garden, some would take it. It's a judgement call. A house or small bungalow will easily fit in that space, since by definition it is the width of a house. That's what small developers optimise.
Then he began slowly clapping his hands.
“Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies”, he announced, getting the inevitable response:
“Then, stop clapping, you evil fucker.”
It's a fair metric for whether Assad's fall was a positive step. If more refugees result then that's a pretty clear sign it was not. If refugees start to return then that's an equally clear sign that what follows is an improvement.
I'm also rather sceptical about your immigration fears. The countries that have done the vast majority of work to house Syrian refugees are those adjacent countries such as Turkey and Jordan. We have taken a few tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. Turkey has taken over three million; Jordan over half a million. (1)
*If* the new regime is better than Assad (not hard...), then many of those may actually want to return home.
I remember the complaints on here about Cameron's plan to pay those countries housing Syrian refugees, to help them with the costs. Many - especially on the right - vociferously complained about this.
I argued he was right then, and *if* there is another massive outflow of refugees, we should do the same now.
(1): https://www.statista.com/statistics/740233/major-syrian-refugee-hosting-countries-worldwide/