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Great expectations for 2025 – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,223
edited December 21 in General
Great expectations for 2025 – politicalbetting.com

And looking forward, do you think 2025 will be a good or a bad year?A good/great year: 40%An average year: 28%A bad/terrible year: 18%https://t.co/lpff6BjAH8 pic.twitter.com/jgcqbWkXka

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Comments

  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864
    Economically, it may depend on whether Trump is able to enact all of the madder policies he's been proposing. If he does, it will be Truss on crack and definitely a suboptimal year.

    If he can't, and instead resorts to ranting inanely about sharks and e-boats while nothing much happens, it will be an average year.

    Hard to see how it will be a good year economically.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,904
    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 53,020
    What larks, Pip!
  • What larks, Pip!

    Hurrah, somebody spotted my subtle reference to Charles Dickens.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864
    edited December 21
    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864

    What larks, Pip!

    Hurrah, somebody spotted my subtle reference to Charles Dickens.
    I do hope nobody has accused you of being a huge Dickensian.

    https://youtu.be/NhLNq2VXdDA?si=j1SBfJT2merEEUze&t=125
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,146

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    You seem very sure that you'll be one of the 4.6% of your gender and age group who are forecast to live to 100.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

    Good luck to you, but statistically you should probably have had your crisis already.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,904

    What larks, Pip!

    Hurrah, somebody spotted my subtle reference to Charles Dickens.
    Does this make 2024 Bleak House?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864

    What larks, Pip!

    Hurrah, somebody spotted my subtle reference to Charles Dickens.
    Does this make 2024 Bleak House?
    Perhaps it will start with a Twist.

    Just so long as the Tories don't try more sketches by Bozza.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,180
    Golly, that Saudi doctor appears to have been radicalised by…the West?

    https://x.com/afneil/status/1870366678204223720?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,558

    Last night, some “reporting” here said the Xmas market attacker was a jihadist and that 11 people were dead. This morning, it appears that 2 people have died and the attacker was an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam campaigner who supported the AfD.

    The events in Magdeburg are horrific. It is a small comfort that they are not as bad as some reports. We again see why we should be cautious about rushing to conclusions.

    Yes, the usual suspect on here - who last night was demanding 'CHANGE!', does appear to have somewhat jumped to conclusions.

    But as ever, his view will modify to incorporate the new information. But it will still be hate-filled.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 21,709
    2025: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,962

    Last night, some “reporting” here said the Xmas market attacker was a jihadist and that 11 people were dead. This morning, it appears that 2 people have died and the attacker was an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam campaigner who supported the AfD.

    The events in Magdeburg are horrific. It is a small comfort that they are not as bad as some reports. We again see why we should be cautious about rushing to conclusions.

    Apparently he was a psychotherapist. If ever there was a case that called for, "physician, heal thyself," this was it.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,002
    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864

    Last night, some “reporting” here said the Xmas market attacker was a jihadist and that 11 people were dead. This morning, it appears that 2 people have died and the attacker was an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam campaigner who supported the AfD.

    The events in Magdeburg are horrific. It is a small comfort that they are not as bad as some reports. We again see why we should be cautious about rushing to conclusions.

    Apparently he was a psychotherapist. If ever there was a case that called for, "physician, heal thyself," this was it.
    I thought he was at various times a travel writer, novelist, male model and knapper of flint dildos?

    Oh, you didn't mean Leon?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,558
    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    This is why I tried to press @Leon about what he meant by 'change', which he declared is needed. He did not respond..
  • AnneJGPAnneJGP Posts: 3,103
    Good morning, everyone.

    I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 50,185
    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    How is 5 correct? Unless you meant, "opportune" for us rather than him?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864
    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    How is 5 correct? Unless you meant, "opportune" for us rather than him?
    My predictions were of things that *wouldn't* happen.

    So I was saying Sunak *wouldn't* call an election at an opportune moment.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 50,185

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    This is why I tried to press @Leon about what he meant by 'change', which he declared is needed. He did not respond..
    Because it's 100% emotion (and not positive) and 0% rationality. I can only assume his nanny Amina dropped him when he was a baby.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,146
    edited December 21
    DavidL said:

    2024 was a year where, once again, our political class failed to get close to addressing our substantial economic problems, indeed they aggravated them in an exceptionally poor budget after the election gave a chance of a fresh start.

    I fear that in 2025 we will pay more of the consequences of this ineptitude with a modest recession, rising unemployment and virtually no growth at all. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a reset and its not going to be pleasant. We might keep things staggering on until 2026 unless Trump causes a crisis sooner than expected.


    We will keep things staggering on well past 2026 I imagine. There is no urgency to do anything about our ongoing stagnation and gentle decline, especially as it would involve considerable short-term pain for many vocal lobby groups of parasites, from farmers and NIMBYs to malingerers and Northerners.

    Greece and Spain needed the disastrous euro crisis on top of the global financial crisis to introduce more sensible economic policies. Argentina needed two decades of underperformance and very high inflation. It is much easier for countries to coast along, with everything slowly getting shabbier and the hard-working and enterprising, and the young, in particular, getting screwed over, but nothing drastically and suddenly changing for the worse, which is what we're doing.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864
    County cricket is dying, apparently.

    Except - for the 30 million views of county livestreams.

    https://www.gloscricket.co.uk/news/professional-counties-reach-30-million-live-stream-views/
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    My 50s were my best decade. Seriously. Enjoy!
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,002
    DavidL said:

    2024 was a year where, once again, our political class failed to get close to addressing our substantial economic problems, indeed they aggravated them in an exceptionally poor budget after the election gave a chance of a fresh start.

    I fear that in 2025 we will pay more of the consequences of this ineptitude with a modest recession, rising unemployment and virtually no growth at all. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a reset and it’s not going to be pleasant. We might keep things staggering on until 2026 unless Trump causes a crisis sooner than expected.

    I’d be interested in what you consider a “reset” and what such a thing looks like. The fundamental problem remains we want European or even Scandinavian level public services on American levels of taxation.

    Fifty years of propaganda telling us how lower personal taxation will be our economic salvation have got us the sum total of nowhere. Reeves would have been more economically honest had she raised basic rate tax to 25p and higher rate to 50p.

    Even now, we hear on a regular basis about the “evils” of public spending and how we can fire anywhere between 50-90% of civil servants with no consequences. I’m not disputing there isn’t waste in the public sector but there’s no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 53,020
    ydoethur said:

    What larks, Pip!

    Is that a sign you think it will be estella year?
    2025: return of the jazz mag which online porn killed?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    stodge said:

    DavidL said:

    2024 was a year where, once again, our political class failed to get close to addressing our substantial economic problems, indeed they aggravated them in an exceptionally poor budget after the election gave a chance of a fresh start.

    I fear that in 2025 we will pay more of the consequences of this ineptitude with a modest recession, rising unemployment and virtually no growth at all. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a reset and it’s not going to be pleasant. We might keep things staggering on until 2026 unless Trump causes a crisis sooner than expected.

    I’d be interested in what you consider a “reset” and what such a thing looks like. The fundamental problem remains we want European or even Scandinavian level public services on American levels of taxation.

    Fifty years of propaganda telling us how lower personal taxation will be our economic salvation have got us the sum total of nowhere. Reeves would have been more economically honest had she raised basic rate tax to 25p and higher rate to 50p.

    Even now, we hear on a regular basis about the “evils” of public spending and how we can fire anywhere between 50-90% of civil servants with no consequences. I’m not disputing there isn’t waste in the public sector but there’s no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
    Musk fired 90% of the staff at X. Everyone said “it will implode”. Seems fine
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 53,020
    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Hardly hidden, as his inability to negotiate a set of airplane steps demonstrated.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,571
    It’s funny how whenever there is some sort of attack such as Magdeburg, there are five positions.

    1. Those who actively hope it’s an Islamic terror attack.
    2. Those who actively hope it’s a mental health incident or other and not Islam related.
    3. Those who are more passively worried that it’s an Islamic terror attack and will affect “their side”.
    4. Those who are more passively worried it’s a different motive and will affect “their side”.
    5. People who aren’t twats who wait to find out what happened.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,777
    I'm not sure I got anything right in 2024.

    Well, I did make a fair whack on the UK GE but Mystic Meg I was not.

    Only thing I'll claim is that I was saying Starmer would be a one-term PM even before the election, and was much pilloried for it.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 53,020
    Leon said:

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    My 50s were my best decade. Seriously. Enjoy!
    I found turning 50 deeply troubling, for no reason I could put my finger on.

    But then, I was convinced I was still 27 until I got to 62, when I had to reassess. "Late middle age" is proving quite a moveable feast.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,777
    AnneJGP said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?

    Things can always get worse. Much worse.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,777
    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    Morning all, surely?
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,558
    boulay said:

    It’s funny how whenever there is some sort of attack such as Magdeburg, there are five positions.

    1. Those who actively hope it’s an Islamic terror attack.
    2. Those who actively hope it’s a mental health incident or other and not Islam related.
    3. Those who are more passively worried that it’s an Islamic terror attack and will affect “their side”.
    4. Those who are more passively worried it’s a different motive and will affect “their side”.
    5. People who aren’t twats who wait to find out what happened.

    My first reaction when I hear about this sort of thing is to often give a quick prayer for the injured and dead.

    Not that, as an agnostic, I'm very good at praying. But it's an instinctive reaction.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,489

    What larks, Pip!

    Hurrah, somebody spotted my subtle reference to Charles Dickens.
    Does this make 2024 Bleak House?
    Quite so, full of lawyers doing well for themselves.

    'We stood aside, watching for any countenance we knew; and presently great bundles of paper began to be carried out—bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes, which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being, anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more. Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person who was standing in the midst of them, whether the cause was over. "Yes," he said; "it was all up with it at last!" and burst out laughing too. ...

    "Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment. "Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate is found to have been absorbed in costs?"

    "Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do you say?"

    "I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.

    "And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"

    "Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?"

    "Probably," said Mr. Vholes.'
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 53,020
    ydoethur said:

    IanB2 said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    How is 5 correct? Unless you meant, "opportune" for us rather than him?
    My predictions were of things that *wouldn't* happen.

    So I was saying Sunak *wouldn't* call an election at an opportune moment.
    My list for 2025 would be headed by Rachel Reeves winning the Nobel Prize for Economics.
  • AnneJGPAnneJGP Posts: 3,103

    AnneJGP said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?

    Things can always get worse. Much worse.
    You're right, sadly. After I'd posted that comment, it occurred to me that it might be a political view, in that so many people are glad to see the back of the Conservative government.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,959

    I'm not sure I got anything right in 2024.

    Well, I did make a fair whack on the UK GE but Mystic Meg I was not.

    Only thing I'll claim is that I was saying Starmer would be a one-term PM even before the election, and was much pilloried for it.

    You got the Epsom and Ewell bet at 14-1. That was inspired. As it happened I had a little bit of inside info regarding this and knew the level of targeting involved. Although I didn't expect us to win it, 14-1 were very good odds so well spotted.
  • CiceroCicero Posts: 3,132
    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
    "We" ?
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 12,913
    AnneJGP said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?

    People seem not to have great expectations of hard times.

    Isn't it a matter of what the question means? 'Is this going to be a great year for Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan, the homeless, middling income people trying to buy a house in Chelsea.' No.

    But from my rural Cumbrian perch, most people most of the time separate out Politics and Bad Stuff from their daily lives of friends, babies, school run, pubs, work, gym, family, shopping, days out, and think life is fine.

    2024 was awful - see above. 2024 was great. Two new baby granddaughters in October. Both fine, wanted, loved...2025 will be like this too.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 17,485
    edited December 21
    FPT, but I'd really like to understand:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nearly finished a week of doing my taxes. Just a couple of hours needed now, after Christmas

    What gets me REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY QUITE RESENTFUL is the fact that: if I am a day late filing my returns, I get INSTANTLY fined. But HMRC, all working from home, are now taking A YEAR to process Tax Exemption forms, despite multiple calls, and feeble promises, thereby costing me serious money

    Utter state of this country

    I'm not joking. A YEAR. AT LEAST

    To process one form
    Bureacracies tend to be more concerned with adherence to their own rules by others than their own compliance with standards, rules, or the law.
    It's making me quite irritable. I spoke to my Knapping Foreign Tax Accountant today, and she said the only tax authority in the world that is as fucked up as the UK's is....Germany's

    And it just so happens that my much-needed tax form is for exemption from tax by.... Germany

    She said "the whole thing could take easily two years, or more"

    I've already waited one year for the UK - AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T DELIVERED - and even when I get the form, perhaps when I am dead, I have to wait at least another year for the fucking krauts to be as shite as the British

    It is emblematic of the two sick men of Europe. Germany and the UK
    We sent a form to reclaim some German VAT (MwSt) (Well our German accountants did) a few weeks back. I reckon it'll be at least a couple of years we're out of pocket (If we're lucky) on it
    Fucking maddening. I reckon HMRC's pitiful chaos - along with that of Germany's - is costing me thousands. Maybe tens of thousands if for some reason I keel over in the interim

    WTF am I meant to do? My government no longer serves its purpose, it cannot run an efficient state. And yet when I vote for the other lot, they are just as bad, indeed significantly worse

    For this reason alone I will vote Reform, to terrify the shit out of ALL the Establishment. I want them frightened for their jobs and I want half of them sacked
    still waiting for a refund from HMRC from April - all it says is "pending" -apparently referred to a special department despite them accepting evidence of the pension contributions that caused the refund. Can you get to talk to that department -nah of course not - the only conversation you will have (after about 30 minutes of infuriating nannying messages about finding out online any query ) is with yourself saying "Fing hell" when it then cuts you off
    They're all at home. When I call them I can literally hear their fucking pets and kids kicking off, and then they say "Oh I can't find the file, let me get back to you in a few days"

    Well maybe you can't find it because you are sitting on your obese butt in your fucking house in Newent, you pathetic lazy bint

    I have honestly had HMRC twats say to me, "We understand we have failed you, we are now expediting your case"

    EXPEDITING

    And then - nothing. She goes and has another biscuit. If I ran my life like this I'd be out of work in weeks

    It is utterly pathetic. Get them back in the office and halve their pay with the threat of instant dismissal and replacement by a keen, eager, articulate robot
    I don't get the antipathy to working from home that many on the Right have. My wife works from home full time as a commercial lawyer for a major healthcare company, and works her arse off - often late into the night; when I work from home (2 days a week) I am at my desk dawn to dusk.

    Don't ascribe to bad management or a bad company/corporate culture the location of where someone is working.

    If they fuck about at home they'd fuck about in the office.
    The three non-charitable explanations are that the it's the age gradient (the right are now basically the retired and they don't want to think that the generation below them can do things better than they did), vested interests (newspapers and commercial property, because it's easier to make money by seeking rents than actually doing stuff), and management who (they have to believe they are doing something useful for their money).

    But neither of those explanations feels especially kind.

    Yes, there's training and networking, but neither of those requires everyone in every, or even most, days.

    And the bottom line seems trivial. Reducing office space saves businesses a lot of money, even if you allow for properly equipping staff. And not commuting saves staff time, significantly increasing their happiness.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864
    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Here is an interesting paradox.

    By saying you were right about everything, having been wrong about many things, you are wrong, and therefore demonstrably wrong in your claim to be right about everything.

    Bertrand Russell could explain this to you in more detail.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    AnneJGP said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?

    Things can always get worse. Much worse.
    Cheer up. My tax returns are done. Christmas now beckons, with wine and plum pudding. The Groucho Club reopens on January 10. My two week long cold is - finally? Ins’allah - receding. Most of all, today is the winter solstice. Literally the year’s pivot, this is the moment when the Armies of the Sun cease their endless retreat, pause, turn around, narrow their eyes… and begin the fight back. Light is returning

    🌞
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,146
    edited December 21
    stodge said:

    DavidL said:

    2024 was a year where, once again, our political class failed to get close to addressing our substantial economic problems, indeed they aggravated them in an exceptionally poor budget after the election gave a chance of a fresh start.

    I fear that in 2025 we will pay more of the consequences of this ineptitude with a modest recession, rising unemployment and virtually no growth at all. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a reset and it’s not going to be pleasant. We might keep things staggering on until 2026 unless Trump causes a crisis sooner than expected.

    I’d be interested in what you consider a “reset” and what such a thing looks like. The fundamental problem remains we want European or even Scandinavian level public services on American levels of taxation.

    Fifty years of propaganda telling us how lower personal taxation will be our economic salvation have got us the sum total of nowhere. Reeves would have been more economically honest had she raised basic rate tax to 25p and higher rate to 50p.

    Even now, we hear on a regular basis about the “evils” of public spending and how we can fire anywhere between 50-90% of civil servants with no consequences. I’m not disputing there isn’t waste in the public sector but there’s no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
    I'd say we need five things:

    - a full reimagining of the state from ground up. Concentrate on only those activities where there is clear evidence that the state does a better job than the private sector AND where there is overwhelming public support. That dooms items such as foreign aid and farming subsidies for a start
    - building on that, constant, ongoing justification of government programs and regulation so zombie projects don't continue long after their point has ended, just because of inertia or powerful lobby groups.
    - a public consensus that the welfare state should be a safety net, not a hammock, and that it is morally wrong to live off government without providing services in return. Get the unemployed or malingerers picking up litter if nothing else.
    - a recognition that even though there's a problem, more government is rarely the solution, given unintended side effects. Government intervention often causes more problems than it solves
    - tackling three areas of disastrous national failure: energy, infrastructure and housing. To its credit, the current government is doing at least something on the last, albeit in an incompetent and probably counter-productive way. To its debit it is making our energy, already some of the most expensive in the world much, much worse.

    We won't get any of this of course, and if we do it'll be painful in the short term so we'll wish we hadn't, but if we really want to end our stagnation, this is how.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 54,054
    stodge said:

    DavidL said:

    2024 was a year where, once again, our political class failed to get close to addressing our substantial economic problems, indeed they aggravated them in an exceptionally poor budget after the election gave a chance of a fresh start.

    I fear that in 2025 we will pay more of the consequences of this ineptitude with a modest recession, rising unemployment and virtually no growth at all. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a reset and it’s not going to be pleasant. We might keep things staggering on until 2026 unless Trump causes a crisis sooner than expected.

    I’d be interested in what you consider a “reset” and what such a thing looks like. The fundamental problem remains we want European or even Scandinavian level public services on American levels of taxation.

    Fifty years of propaganda telling us how lower personal taxation will be our economic salvation have got us the sum total of nowhere. Reeves would have been more economically honest had she raised basic rate tax to 25p and higher rate to 50p.

    Even now, we hear on a regular basis about the “evils” of public spending and how we can fire anywhere between 50-90% of civil servants with no consequences. I’m not disputing there isn’t waste in the public sector but there’s no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
    A reset will be when we are forced to stop borrowing more and more money from the markets because it becomes prohibitively expensive (of course on any rational analysis we are already there). That will require UK governments to live within their means, indeed more than within their means as the debts due to be repaid each year pile up.

    This will involve genuinely savage cuts in public expenditure such as we saw in Greece, Italy and, more recently Argentina. The very large, very comfortable state which looks after its own so well will simply not be sustainable any longer. This will also involve much higher levels of taxation to sustain genuinely essential public services. It is certainly not a tax cutters agenda Trump/Musk style, quite the opposite.

    Of course, such cuts in government largesse and tax increases will also drive the economy into short term recession. But, hopefully, we can come out of that with a more sustainable economy not built on our kids and their kids money to fuel our consumption.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Here is an interesting paradox.

    By saying you were right about everything, having been wrong about many things, you are wrong, and therefore demonstrably wrong in your claim to be right about everything.

    Bertrand Russell could explain this to you in more detail.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
    You know I did a UCL degree in Philosophy? We used to scoff - literally laugh and throw cherry pips - at the mere *idea* of Bertrand Russell
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,180
    Leon said:

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    My 50s were my best decade. Seriously. Enjoy!
    The pierced perineum may have been a mistake though.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    FPT, but I'd really like to understand:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nearly finished a week of doing my taxes. Just a couple of hours needed now, after Christmas

    What gets me REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY QUITE RESENTFUL is the fact that: if I am a day late filing my returns, I get INSTANTLY fined. But HMRC, all working from home, are now taking A YEAR to process Tax Exemption forms, despite multiple calls, and feeble promises, thereby costing me serious money

    Utter state of this country

    I'm not joking. A YEAR. AT LEAST

    To process one form
    Bureacracies tend to be more concerned with adherence to their own rules by others than their own compliance with standards, rules, or the law.
    It's making me quite irritable. I spoke to my Knapping Foreign Tax Accountant today, and she said the only tax authority in the world that is as fucked up as the UK's is....Germany's

    And it just so happens that my much-needed tax form is for exemption from tax by.... Germany

    She said "the whole thing could take easily two years, or more"

    I've already waited one year for the UK - AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T DELIVERED - and even when I get the form, perhaps when I am dead, I have to wait at least another year for the fucking krauts to be as shite as the British

    It is emblematic of the two sick men of Europe. Germany and the UK
    We sent a form to reclaim some German VAT (MwSt) (Well our German accountants did) a few weeks back. I reckon it'll be at least a couple of years we're out of pocket (If we're lucky) on it
    Fucking maddening. I reckon HMRC's pitiful chaos - along with that of Germany's - is costing me thousands. Maybe tens of thousands if for some reason I keel over in the interim

    WTF am I meant to do? My government no longer serves its purpose, it cannot run an efficient state. And yet when I vote for the other lot, they are just as bad, indeed significantly worse

    For this reason alone I will vote Reform, to terrify the shit out of ALL the Establishment. I want them frightened for their jobs and I want half of them sacked
    still waiting for a refund from HMRC from April - all it says is "pending" -apparently referred to a special department despite them accepting evidence of the pension contributions that caused the refund. Can you get to talk to that department -nah of course not - the only conversation you will have (after about 30 minutes of infuriating nannying messages about finding out online any query ) is with yourself saying "Fing hell" when it then cuts you off
    They're all at home. When I call them I can literally hear their fucking pets and kids kicking off, and then they say "Oh I can't find the file, let me get back to you in a few days"

    Well maybe you can't find it because you are sitting on your obese butt in your fucking house in Newent, you pathetic lazy bint

    I have honestly had HMRC twats say to me, "We understand we have failed you, we are now expediting your case"

    EXPEDITING

    And then - nothing. She goes and has another biscuit. If I ran my life like this I'd be out of work in weeks

    It is utterly pathetic. Get them back in the office and halve their pay with the threat of instant dismissal and replacement by a keen, eager, articulate robot
    I don't get the antipathy to working from home that many on the Right have. My wife works from home full time as a commercial lawyer for a major healthcare company, and works her arse off - often late into the night; when I work from home (2 days a week) I am at my desk dawn to dusk.

    Don't ascribe to bad management or a bad company/corporate culture the location of where someone is working.

    If they fuck about at home they'd fuck about in the office.
    The two non-charitable explanations are that the it's the age gradient (the right are now basically the retired and they don't want to think that the generation below them can do things better than they did), vested interests (newspapers and commercial property, because it's easier to make money by seeking rents than actually doing stuff), and management who (they have to believe they are doing something useful for their money).

    But neither of those explanations feels especially kind.

    Yes, there's training and networking, but neither of those requires everyone in every, or even most, days.

    And the bottom line seems trivial. Reducing office space saves businesses a lot of money, even if you allow for properly equipping staff. And not commuting saves staff time, significantly increasing their happiness.
    No, it’s because HMRC is demonstrably shit and I’ve heard from several sources that a primary reason is “Working From Home” - this includes a senior manager at HMRC

    I think it’s something to do with HMRC still relying on paperwork, whereas many (most?) organisations are entirely digital. If you need instant access to documents, being “at home” is a problem

    I’m sure WFH is fine for many companies, and a boon for some employees (tho I lament its effects on city life and socialisation for young people). HMRC is an example of how it can go wrong
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 43,558
    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Here is an interesting paradox.

    By saying you were right about everything, having been wrong about many things, you are wrong, and therefore demonstrably wrong in your claim to be right about everything.

    Bertrand Russell could explain this to you in more detail.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
    You know I did a UCL degree in Philosophy? We used to scoff - literally laugh and throw cherry pips - at the mere *idea* of Bertrand Russell
    Bertrand Russell's suddenly become a lot more reliable... ;)
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 43,489
    Leon said:

    FPT, but I'd really like to understand:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nearly finished a week of doing my taxes. Just a couple of hours needed now, after Christmas

    What gets me REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY QUITE RESENTFUL is the fact that: if I am a day late filing my returns, I get INSTANTLY fined. But HMRC, all working from home, are now taking A YEAR to process Tax Exemption forms, despite multiple calls, and feeble promises, thereby costing me serious money

    Utter state of this country

    I'm not joking. A YEAR. AT LEAST

    To process one form
    Bureacracies tend to be more concerned with adherence to their own rules by others than their own compliance with standards, rules, or the law.
    It's making me quite irritable. I spoke to my Knapping Foreign Tax Accountant today, and she said the only tax authority in the world that is as fucked up as the UK's is....Germany's

    And it just so happens that my much-needed tax form is for exemption from tax by.... Germany

    She said "the whole thing could take easily two years, or more"

    I've already waited one year for the UK - AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T DELIVERED - and even when I get the form, perhaps when I am dead, I have to wait at least another year for the fucking krauts to be as shite as the British

    It is emblematic of the two sick men of Europe. Germany and the UK
    We sent a form to reclaim some German VAT (MwSt) (Well our German accountants did) a few weeks back. I reckon it'll be at least a couple of years we're out of pocket (If we're lucky) on it
    Fucking maddening. I reckon HMRC's pitiful chaos - along with that of Germany's - is costing me thousands. Maybe tens of thousands if for some reason I keel over in the interim

    WTF am I meant to do? My government no longer serves its purpose, it cannot run an efficient state. And yet when I vote for the other lot, they are just as bad, indeed significantly worse

    For this reason alone I will vote Reform, to terrify the shit out of ALL the Establishment. I want them frightened for their jobs and I want half of them sacked
    still waiting for a refund from HMRC from April - all it says is "pending" -apparently referred to a special department despite them accepting evidence of the pension contributions that caused the refund. Can you get to talk to that department -nah of course not - the only conversation you will have (after about 30 minutes of infuriating nannying messages about finding out online any query ) is with yourself saying "Fing hell" when it then cuts you off
    They're all at home. When I call them I can literally hear their fucking pets and kids kicking off, and then they say "Oh I can't find the file, let me get back to you in a few days"

    Well maybe you can't find it because you are sitting on your obese butt in your fucking house in Newent, you pathetic lazy bint

    I have honestly had HMRC twats say to me, "We understand we have failed you, we are now expediting your case"

    EXPEDITING

    And then - nothing. She goes and has another biscuit. If I ran my life like this I'd be out of work in weeks

    It is utterly pathetic. Get them back in the office and halve their pay with the threat of instant dismissal and replacement by a keen, eager, articulate robot
    I don't get the antipathy to working from home that many on the Right have. My wife works from home full time as a commercial lawyer for a major healthcare company, and works her arse off - often late into the night; when I work from home (2 days a week) I am at my desk dawn to dusk.

    Don't ascribe to bad management or a bad company/corporate culture the location of where someone is working.

    If they fuck about at home they'd fuck about in the office.
    The two non-charitable explanations are that the it's the age gradient (the right are now basically the retired and they don't want to think that the generation below them can do things better than they did), vested interests (newspapers and commercial property, because it's easier to make money by seeking rents than actually doing stuff), and management who (they have to believe they are doing something useful for their money).

    But neither of those explanations feels especially kind.

    Yes, there's training and networking, but neither of those requires everyone in every, or even most, days.

    And the bottom line seems trivial. Reducing office space saves businesses a lot of money, even if you allow for properly equipping staff. And not commuting saves staff time, significantly increasing their happiness.
    No, it’s because HMRC is demonstrably shit and I’ve heard from several sources that a primary reason is “Working From Home” - this includes a senior manager at HMRC

    I think it’s something to do with HMRC still relying on paperwork, whereas many (most?) organisations are entirely digital. If you need instant access to documents, being “at home” is a problem

    I’m sure WFH is fine for many companies, and a boon for some employees (tho I lament its effects on city life and socialisation for young people). HMRC is an example of how it can go wrong
    Given how much HMRC have gone towards discouraging paperwork, that doesn't sem convincing at all.

    I believe that what they do with paperwork is scan it into the computer as soon as it comes in. There are details of the form that point strongly to that.

    So paperwork is not a convincing explanation - in fact it damages your theory.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,975
    edited December 21

    Leon said:

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    My 50s were my best decade. Seriously. Enjoy!
    I found turning 50 deeply troubling, for no reason I could put my finger on.

    But then, I was convinced I was still 27 until I got to 62, when I had to reassess. "Late middle age" is proving quite a moveable feast.
    Although at 62 isn't life more of an "immovable" feast as one struggles to exit the armchair, not so much in any visible way but that these days the muscles would prefer to remain in the chair? Likewise using the a and b pillars of the car to haul oneself out.

    I was at the Turkish barbers after work yesterday and for 62, I have aged better than most, but staring at oneself for 45 minutes with the wet hair looking significantly thinner, the Santa beard looking bushier than ever pre-cut, and the crows feet appearing as Golden Eagle talons I would go back to the 27 year old look all day long, even if that meant a return to 15% mortgage interest repayments, a Thatcher Government and a Vauxhall Cavalier with wind up windows.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,959
    edited December 21
    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
    Now this why you shouldn't be able to hide your posts. So that people can check if that is true. If I say I said something people can check if it is true quickly without having to use search tools. To be honest I can't be bothered to check because I don't care, but after yesterday it is not unreasonable for people arguing with you to check if true, which they currently can do.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864
    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Here is an interesting paradox.

    By saying you were right about everything, having been wrong about many things, you are wrong, and therefore demonstrably wrong in your claim to be right about everything.

    Bertrand Russell could explain this to you in more detail.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
    You know I did a UCL degree in Philosophy? We used to scoff - literally laugh and throw cherry pips - at the mere *idea* of Bertrand Russell
    So you do need him to explain a bit more?

    (Anyway, thank your lucky stars I haven't started quoting Ayer's Verification Principle at you.)
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,962
    https://kyivindependent.com/for-first-time-ukraine-attacks-russian-positions-using-solely-ground-fpv-drones/

    "Ukrainian forces successfully attacked Russian positions using only ground and first person view (FPV) drones instead of infantry, an army spokesperson claimed on Dec. 20."

    If Russia is defeated in Ukraine they will be chased out by a veritable horde of drones. Britain won WWI with technological innovation, and Ukraine can still win this war the same way.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,990

    https://kyivindependent.com/for-first-time-ukraine-attacks-russian-positions-using-solely-ground-fpv-drones/

    "Ukrainian forces successfully attacked Russian positions using only ground and first person view (FPV) drones instead of infantry, an army spokesperson claimed on Dec. 20."

    If Russia is defeated in Ukraine they will be chased out by a veritable horde of drones. Britain won WWI with technological innovation, and Ukraine can still win this war the same way.

    In addition to supporting Ukraine we should, and must, learn all we can about drone warfare in both offensive and defensive terms.
  • 2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    Good morning

    And our youngest - where has the last 50 year's gone ?

    Have a wonderful year
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,975

    AnneJGP said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?

    Things can always get worse. Much worse.
    A coup and a Farage-Musk Dictatorship?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    FPT, but I'd really like to understand:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nearly finished a week of doing my taxes. Just a couple of hours needed now, after Christmas

    What gets me REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY QUITE RESENTFUL is the fact that: if I am a day late filing my returns, I get INSTANTLY fined. But HMRC, all working from home, are now taking A YEAR to process Tax Exemption forms, despite multiple calls, and feeble promises, thereby costing me serious money

    Utter state of this country

    I'm not joking. A YEAR. AT LEAST

    To process one form
    Bureacracies tend to be more concerned with adherence to their own rules by others than their own compliance with standards, rules, or the law.
    It's making me quite irritable. I spoke to my Knapping Foreign Tax Accountant today, and she said the only tax authority in the world that is as fucked up as the UK's is....Germany's

    And it just so happens that my much-needed tax form is for exemption from tax by.... Germany

    She said "the whole thing could take easily two years, or more"

    I've already waited one year for the UK - AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T DELIVERED - and even when I get the form, perhaps when I am dead, I have to wait at least another year for the fucking krauts to be as shite as the British

    It is emblematic of the two sick men of Europe. Germany and the UK
    We sent a form to reclaim some German VAT (MwSt) (Well our German accountants did) a few weeks back. I reckon it'll be at least a couple of years we're out of pocket (If we're lucky) on it
    Fucking maddening. I reckon HMRC's pitiful chaos - along with that of Germany's - is costing me thousands. Maybe tens of thousands if for some reason I keel over in the interim

    WTF am I meant to do? My government no longer serves its purpose, it cannot run an efficient state. And yet when I vote for the other lot, they are just as bad, indeed significantly worse

    For this reason alone I will vote Reform, to terrify the shit out of ALL the Establishment. I want them frightened for their jobs and I want half of them sacked
    still waiting for a refund from HMRC from April - all it says is "pending" -apparently referred to a special department despite them accepting evidence of the pension contributions that caused the refund. Can you get to talk to that department -nah of course not - the only conversation you will have (after about 30 minutes of infuriating nannying messages about finding out online any query ) is with yourself saying "Fing hell" when it then cuts you off
    They're all at home. When I call them I can literally hear their fucking pets and kids kicking off, and then they say "Oh I can't find the file, let me get back to you in a few days"

    Well maybe you can't find it because you are sitting on your obese butt in your fucking house in Newent, you pathetic lazy bint

    I have honestly had HMRC twats say to me, "We understand we have failed you, we are now expediting your case"

    EXPEDITING

    And then - nothing. She goes and has another biscuit. If I ran my life like this I'd be out of work in weeks

    It is utterly pathetic. Get them back in the office and halve their pay with the threat of instant dismissal and replacement by a keen, eager, articulate robot
    I don't get the antipathy to working from home that many on the Right have. My wife works from home full time as a commercial lawyer for a major healthcare company, and works her arse off - often late into the night; when I work from home (2 days a week) I am at my desk dawn to dusk.

    Don't ascribe to bad management or a bad company/corporate culture the location of where someone is working.

    If they fuck about at home they'd fuck about in the office.
    The two non-charitable explanations are that the it's the age gradient (the right are now basically the retired and they don't want to think that the generation below them can do things better than they did), vested interests (newspapers and commercial property, because it's easier to make money by seeking rents than actually doing stuff), and management who (they have to believe they are doing something useful for their money).

    But neither of those explanations feels especially kind.

    Yes, there's training and networking, but neither of those requires everyone in every, or even most, days.

    And the bottom line seems trivial. Reducing office space saves businesses a lot of money, even if you allow for properly equipping staff. And not commuting saves staff time, significantly increasing their happiness.
    No, it’s because HMRC is demonstrably shit and I’ve heard from several sources that a primary reason is “Working From Home” - this includes a senior manager at HMRC

    I think it’s something to do with HMRC still relying on paperwork, whereas many (most?) organisations are entirely digital. If you need instant access to documents, being “at home” is a problem

    I’m sure WFH is fine for many companies, and a boon for some employees (tho I lament its effects on city life and socialisation for young people). HMRC is an example of how it can go wrong
    Given how much HMRC have gone towards discouraging paperwork, that doesn't sem convincing at all.

    I believe that what they do with paperwork is scan it into the computer as soon as it comes in. There are details of the form that point strongly to that.

    So paperwork is not a convincing explanation - in fact it damages your theory.
    Tax exemption forms are LITERALLY PAPERWORK. They are HMRC stamped documents that you hold in your hand which you then physically give to foreign tax authorities. You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 18,962
    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
    Now this why you shouldn't be able to hide your posts. So that people can check if that is true. If I say I said something people can check if it is true quickly without having to use search tools. To be honest I can't be bothered to check because I don't care, but after yesterday it is not unreasonable for people arguing with you to check if true which they now can do.
    I can recall Leon advocating for the Danish Social Democrat policy - or at least what he understands it to be from reading about it on twitter - not just yesterday evening, but on other previous occasions too.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864
    edited December 21
    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Here is an interesting paradox.

    By saying you were right about everything, having been wrong about many things, you are wrong, and therefore demonstrably wrong in your claim to be right about everything.

    Bertrand Russell could explain this to you in more detail.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
    You know I did a UCL degree in Philosophy? We used to scoff - literally laugh and throw cherry pips - at the mere *idea* of Bertrand Russell
    Incidentally, did the degree in philosophy explain the difference between atheism and Islamism?

    I just ask because of this last night:
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Guardian reported the likely perpetrator as a Saudi citizen.

    …said to have arrived in Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor...
    Predating the mass migrations promoted by the destabilisations of Syria and Libya.

    Doesn’t fit anyone’s narrative.
    He's a Muslim from Saudi. What extra narrative do you need?
    https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5067207#Comment_5067207

    Turns out the narrative is altogether more complex. In fact, his views (if, fortunately for you, not his actions) seem closely aligned with yours on the subject of Islam.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,864

    AnneJGP said:

    Good morning, everyone.

    I'm astonished at so much optimism. Glad to hear it, I suppose, but where does it come from? In my experience the green shoots of improvement in any field need to be quite high before people generally recognise they are there. And so many people are struggling terribly with life. Is it perhaps a feeling that things can't possibly get any worse?

    Things can always get worse. Much worse.
    A coup and a Farage-Musk Dictatorship?
    A Muskovite Social Democracy?
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,975

    I'm not sure I got anything right in 2024.

    Well, I did make a fair whack on the UK GE but Mystic Meg I was not.

    Only thing I'll claim is that I was saying Starmer would be a one-term PM even before the election, and was much pilloried for it.

    Of course you could be correct, but "events dear boy". Six months into Thatcher's first term I was confident she would be out on her ear by the middle of 1984. And then along came Michael Foot, the SDP and General Galtieri.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,276

    Leon said:

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    My 50s were my best decade. Seriously. Enjoy!
    I found turning 50 deeply troubling, for no reason I could put my finger on.

    But then, I was convinced I was still 27 until I got to 62, when I had to reassess. "Late middle age" is proving quite a moveable feast.
    40 was the birthday I found depressing. The day I stopped being young.

    50 was OK, except for becoming eligible for all those "Over 50" insurance plans, etc, that bracket you in with the elderly.

    Mind, being older than the parents of some of my work colleagues does make me feel old.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 8,972
    edited December 21

    Last night, some “reporting” here said the Xmas market attacker was a jihadist and that 11 people were dead. This morning, it appears that 2 people have died and the attacker was an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam campaigner who supported the AfD.

    The events in Magdeburg are horrific. It is a small comfort that they are not as bad as some reports. We again see why we should be cautious about rushing to conclusions.

    And it turns out I'm not the only one who thought there was something a bit odd about the video doing the rounds (if you slow it down to 0.5x speed it looks more normal, so whoever uploaded it to twitter was playing games). Even still, the car is doing some speed and we know chance of pedestrian survival drops rapidly at even just 40mph.

    The level of abuse and false representation I got for pointing this out was pretty miserable, for what was ultimately quite a minor point. I was accused of denying the terrorist attack even happened.

    I think PB is at it's best when people are allowed to cast a critical eye at things without being hounded off the site.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,959
    edited December 21

    kjh said:

    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
    Now this why you shouldn't be able to hide your posts. So that people can check if that is true. If I say I said something people can check if it is true quickly without having to use search tools. To be honest I can't be bothered to check because I don't care, but after yesterday it is not unreasonable for people arguing with you to check if true which they now can do.
    I can recall Leon advocating for the Danish Social Democrat policy - or at least what he understands it to be from reading about it on twitter - not just yesterday evening, but on other previous occasions too.
    Yep so do I, but he wants to hide these posts. See discussion yesterday why having been shown to have made a trivial fib about a post he then wanted to hide it.

    So when he says he said something last night I think we have the right to check if he really did make a public comment. Did he post that last night?

    This doesn't just apply to him but everyone. If you post here, you shouldn't be able to then try and hide it.

    Sorry I didn't mean to restart this debate. It just seemed like an obvious application of the principle.
  • FishingFishing Posts: 5,146
    stodge said:

    DavidL said:

    2024 was a year where, once again, our political class failed to get close to addressing our substantial economic problems, indeed they aggravated them in an exceptionally poor budget after the election gave a chance of a fresh start.

    I fear that in 2025 we will pay more of the consequences of this ineptitude with a modest recession, rising unemployment and virtually no growth at all. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a reset and it’s not going to be pleasant. We might keep things staggering on until 2026 unless Trump causes a crisis sooner than expected.

    I’d be interested in what you consider a “reset” and what such a thing looks like. The fundamental problem remains we want European or even Scandinavian level public services on American levels of taxation.
    The idea that US levels of taxation are particularly low is something of a myth, or at any rate easily explicable. According to the IMF, in 2022 the US tax take was 33% of GDP. Ours was 39%.

    https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/rev@FPP/USA/FRA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ESP/ITA/ZAF/IND

    But if you adjust for the 7-8% of GDP that in the US is provided for by employers and individuals and in the UK by the state, that more than eliminates the difference.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,904

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    Good morning

    And our youngest - where has the last 50 year's gone ?

    Have a wonderful year
    Thanks Big G. And to you and your lovely family. It's my mum's 80th next year too!
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,209
    Fishing said:

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    You seem very sure that you'll be one of the 4.6% of your gender and age group who are forecast to live to 100.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

    Good luck to you, but statistically you should probably have had your crisis already.
    Maybe it's short for mid-adult-life crisis
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Here is an interesting paradox.

    By saying you were right about everything, having been wrong about many things, you are wrong, and therefore demonstrably wrong in your claim to be right about everything.

    Bertrand Russell could explain this to you in more detail.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
    You know I did a UCL degree in Philosophy? We used to scoff - literally laugh and throw cherry pips - at the mere *idea* of Bertrand Russell
    Incidentally, did the degree in philosophy explain the difference between atheism and Islamism?

    I just ask because of this last night:
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Guardian reported the likely perpetrator as a Saudi citizen.

    …said to have arrived in Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor...
    Predating the mass migrations promoted by the destabilisations of Syria and Libya.

    Doesn’t fit anyone’s narrative.
    He's a Muslim from Saudi. What extra narrative do you need?
    https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5067207#Comment_5067207

    Turns out the narrative is altogether more complex. In fact, his views (if, fortunately for you, not his actions) seem closely aligned with yours on the subject of Islam.
    For you and @kjh - here is my conclusive statement from last night. If it gets me banned, so be it. This is what I firmly believe. Btw we somehow got onto Elon Musk, hence the weird context


    “[Musk] is - to quote a very wise PBer (I forget who) a "visionary". THAT is his ability, plus an intense work ethic and some wildly good STEM skills

    He can imagine and extrapolate. And he is correctly extrapolating that Europe is clearly headed for Far Right governments that won't just restrain immigration, they will literally deport millions. And eventually with force. And the Med and the Channel will be defended with guns which will actually shoot. It is inevitable.... if things proceed as they do - ie left or fake left governments pretending everything is OK and locking up anyone who disagrees

    BUT I differ with Musk on the cure. Denmark shows there is a different and better route than the AfD. You have to admit the migration problem, be honest with the data (crime and rape ARE an issue) but then you can forcefully assimilate while offering generous welfare to those willing to stay and accept western liberal feminist norms, on those grounds. But at the same time you have to bulldoze ghettoes and kick out those who won't accept this. No burqas, no niqabs, no minarets, no call to prayer, Europe is not Islamic”
  • stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    Morning all, surely?
    @stodge is in New Zealand, celebrating mid-summer's day.

    Surely we can all agree to envy him?
    When our son lived in New Zealand between 2003 - 2015, we often visited him at this time of year and it was rather surreal enjoying lovely weather and a festive time in a completely different environment to that which we were accustomed to
  • Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    FPT, but I'd really like to understand:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Nearly finished a week of doing my taxes. Just a couple of hours needed now, after Christmas

    What gets me REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY QUITE RESENTFUL is the fact that: if I am a day late filing my returns, I get INSTANTLY fined. But HMRC, all working from home, are now taking A YEAR to process Tax Exemption forms, despite multiple calls, and feeble promises, thereby costing me serious money

    Utter state of this country

    I'm not joking. A YEAR. AT LEAST

    To process one form
    Bureacracies tend to be more concerned with adherence to their own rules by others than their own compliance with standards, rules, or the law.
    It's making me quite irritable. I spoke to my Knapping Foreign Tax Accountant today, and she said the only tax authority in the world that is as fucked up as the UK's is....Germany's

    And it just so happens that my much-needed tax form is for exemption from tax by.... Germany

    She said "the whole thing could take easily two years, or more"

    I've already waited one year for the UK - AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T DELIVERED - and even when I get the form, perhaps when I am dead, I have to wait at least another year for the fucking krauts to be as shite as the British

    It is emblematic of the two sick men of Europe. Germany and the UK
    We sent a form to reclaim some German VAT (MwSt) (Well our German accountants did) a few weeks back. I reckon it'll be at least a couple of years we're out of pocket (If we're lucky) on it
    Fucking maddening. I reckon HMRC's pitiful chaos - along with that of Germany's - is costing me thousands. Maybe tens of thousands if for some reason I keel over in the interim

    WTF am I meant to do? My government no longer serves its purpose, it cannot run an efficient state. And yet when I vote for the other lot, they are just as bad, indeed significantly worse

    For this reason alone I will vote Reform, to terrify the shit out of ALL the Establishment. I want them frightened for their jobs and I want half of them sacked
    still waiting for a refund from HMRC from April - all it says is "pending" -apparently referred to a special department despite them accepting evidence of the pension contributions that caused the refund. Can you get to talk to that department -nah of course not - the only conversation you will have (after about 30 minutes of infuriating nannying messages about finding out online any query ) is with yourself saying "Fing hell" when it then cuts you off
    They're all at home. When I call them I can literally hear their fucking pets and kids kicking off, and then they say "Oh I can't find the file, let me get back to you in a few days"

    Well maybe you can't find it because you are sitting on your obese butt in your fucking house in Newent, you pathetic lazy bint

    I have honestly had HMRC twats say to me, "We understand we have failed you, we are now expediting your case"

    EXPEDITING

    And then - nothing. She goes and has another biscuit. If I ran my life like this I'd be out of work in weeks

    It is utterly pathetic. Get them back in the office and halve their pay with the threat of instant dismissal and replacement by a keen, eager, articulate robot
    I don't get the antipathy to working from home that many on the Right have. My wife works from home full time as a commercial lawyer for a major healthcare company, and works her arse off - often late into the night; when I work from home (2 days a week) I am at my desk dawn to dusk.

    Don't ascribe to bad management or a bad company/corporate culture the location of where someone is working.

    If they fuck about at home they'd fuck about in the office.
    The two non-charitable explanations are that the it's the age gradient (the right are now basically the retired and they don't want to think that the generation below them can do things better than they did), vested interests (newspapers and commercial property, because it's easier to make money by seeking rents than actually doing stuff), and management who (they have to believe they are doing something useful for their money).

    But neither of those explanations feels especially kind.

    Yes, there's training and networking, but neither of those requires everyone in every, or even most, days.

    And the bottom line seems trivial. Reducing office space saves businesses a lot of money, even if you allow for properly equipping staff. And not commuting saves staff time, significantly increasing their happiness.
    No, it’s because HMRC is demonstrably shit and I’ve heard from several sources that a primary reason is “Working From Home” - this includes a senior manager at HMRC

    I think it’s something to do with HMRC still relying on paperwork, whereas many (most?) organisations are entirely digital. If you need instant access to documents, being “at home” is a problem

    I’m sure WFH is fine for many companies, and a boon for some employees (tho I lament its effects on city life and socialisation for young people). HMRC is an example of how it can go wrong
    Given how much HMRC have gone towards discouraging paperwork, that doesn't sem convincing at all.

    I believe that what they do with paperwork is scan it into the computer as soon as it comes in. There are details of the form that point strongly to that.

    So paperwork is not a convincing explanation - in fact it damages your theory.
    But we are probably getting somewhere.

    Government is discouraging paperwork- because for most situations that is what "cheaper and better" looks like. Efficiency, tax cuts, happy days.

    In this particular unusual case, that doesn't work, but the state has taken the benefits of computerisation to save money- because that's what the public wants.

    (See also self checkouts in supermarkets.)

    WFH is a convenient excuse, I'm sure I would use it if pressured. But that doesn't mean it's true.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,002
    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
    The current Danish coalition of Social Democrats, Liberals and Moderates trail the opposition parties by nearly 30 points in the current polls ahead of the election this November.

    The leading opposition parties are the Green Left and Liberal Alliance so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out next year.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,904
    Fishing said:

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    You seem very sure that you'll be one of the 4.6% of your gender and age group who are forecast to live to 100.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

    Good luck to you, but statistically you should probably have had your crisis already.
    My grandmother made it to 96, but yes you're right, I probably should have had the midlife crisis already. Maybe I have - I have done quite a bit of community theatre and written two unpublished novels in the last few years! No sports car or extramarital affairs yet though.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 5,068
    boulay said:

    It’s funny how whenever there is some sort of attack such as Magdeburg, there are five positions.

    1. Those who actively hope it’s an Islamic terror attack.
    2. Those who actively hope it’s a mental health incident or other and not Islam related.
    3. Those who are more passively worried that it’s an Islamic terror attack and will affect “their side”.
    4. Those who are more passively worried it’s a different motive and will affect “their side”.
    5. People who aren’t twats who wait to find out what happened.

    Unfortunately, 5. seems to be a minority view, especially amongst the twittering classes.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,975

    Leon said:

    2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    My 50s were my best decade. Seriously. Enjoy!
    I found turning 50 deeply troubling, for no reason I could put my finger on.

    But then, I was convinced I was still 27 until I got to 62, when I had to reassess. "Late middle age" is proving quite a moveable feast.
    40 was the birthday I found depressing. The day I stopped being young.

    50 was OK, except for becoming eligible for all those "Over 50" insurance plans, etc, that bracket you in with the elderly.

    Mind, being older than the parents of some of my work colleagues does make me feel old.
    I'd buy back 40 for all that I survey!

    At almost 63 I can just about see the light above the exit door and I haven't even, like my father before me, got a decade of 18 holes of golf each day ahead of me. Instead I'll be catching up on the thoughts of Chairman Leon and William Glenn between meetings.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,002

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    Morning all, surely?
    @stodge is in New Zealand, celebrating mid-summer's day.

    Surely we can all agree to envy him?
    When our son lived in New Zealand between 2003 - 2015, we often visited him at this time of year and it was rather surreal enjoying lovely weather and a festive time in a completely different environment to that which we were accustomed to
    It’s my first Christmas here and it’s culturally unsettling to hear all the carols promoting winter and snow when everyone is in shorts and the temperature is in the mid 20s.

    The other thing is those houses who have Christmas lights don’t have to put them on till 9pm whereas in London they go on at 4pm or when @Leon comes on here and complains how cold and dark it is.
  • 2025 is the big five o for me so I imagine I'll be having a midlife crisis next year.

    Good morning

    And our youngest - where has the last 50 year's gone ?

    Have a wonderful year
    Thanks Big G. And to you and your lovely family. It's my mum's 80th next year too!
    A milestone for both of you, and as the 'good book' says 3 score and ten so 80 plus is an achievement and in our case we have so many blessings to be grateful for, especially in these days of conflict and disunity
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 42,180
    edited December 21
    Lol, Team Tommy went off a bit prematurely. Thank goodness we don’t have that sort of idiocy on PB.

    https://x.com/eyuplovely/status/1870296510363062554?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,959
    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    So, on 2nd January I made a series of predictions of things that definitely wouldn't happen. Let's see how I did:


    1) Vladimir Putin will come up with a new policy on the Ukraine war which involves withdrawal of all Russian troops and not killing people.
    2) The Supreme Court will rule 8-0 that Donald Trump as a mad dangerous fascist who has tried to overthrow the government of the United States is ineligible to be president under the 14th amendment.
    3) Clarence Thomas will honourably recuse himself from every case involving Donald Trump.
    4) The republican nominee will be somebody sane and the democratic nominee will be somebody aged below 107. The winner will be decided by an arm wrestle rather than all that boring and outdated nonsense with the Electoral College so the Russians/Republicans can’t rig the vote.
    5) Rishi Sunak will call an election at an opportune moment.
    6) Inspired however by the enthusiastic endorsement of @bigJohnowls, Keir Starmer will win an overall majority of around 250.
    7) Despite their shattering defeat, the Tories see sense and elect Penny Mordaunt as their new leader rather than a complete nut case (the complete nut case in question being Suella Braverman)
    8) Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes will resign. The England cricket team led by Zak Crawley will win every single test plus a one day international against a scratch team from Outer Mongolia.
    9) Lancashire will have their finest ever year in the championship inspired by their new coach Dale Benkenstein.
    And finally, just in case you thought I was serious:
    10) @Leon will be proved right about something.


    1) Correct
    2) Correct
    3) Correct
    4) Partially correct. The Democrat turned out to be 60 rather than 107, otherwise bang on.
    5) Correct
    6) Rather less correct than is healthy given the voteshare, but I was right about Chesterfield's finest, at least sofa.
    7) Partially correct. It wasn't Braverman, but...
    8) Correct (in fact, worse than correct as McCullum has taken over the white ball side too).
    9) Correct. And I would just like to thank Lancashire for relieving Gloucestershire of the incubus that was Dale Benkenstein.
    10) Well...enough said.

    Aside from everything else (where I am also right), 2024 was the year when my prediction “Biden is gaga, and this is a slow brewing disaster for the Democrats” turned out to be horribly correct
    Here is an interesting paradox.

    By saying you were right about everything, having been wrong about many things, you are wrong, and therefore demonstrably wrong in your claim to be right about everything.

    Bertrand Russell could explain this to you in more detail.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/
    You know I did a UCL degree in Philosophy? We used to scoff - literally laugh and throw cherry pips - at the mere *idea* of Bertrand Russell
    Incidentally, did the degree in philosophy explain the difference between atheism and Islamism?

    I just ask because of this last night:
    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Guardian reported the likely perpetrator as a Saudi citizen.

    …said to have arrived in Germany in 2006 and worked as a doctor...
    Predating the mass migrations promoted by the destabilisations of Syria and Libya.

    Doesn’t fit anyone’s narrative.
    He's a Muslim from Saudi. What extra narrative do you need?
    https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/5067207#Comment_5067207

    Turns out the narrative is altogether more complex. In fact, his views (if, fortunately for you, not his actions) seem closely aligned with yours on the subject of Islam.
    As with most journalists the knowledge on any subject is wafer thin, reactionary and enormously wide. Can anyone think of any report they have read or seen on which they just happen to have some expert knowledge, and thought 'Yep they got that spot on'.

    Ben Goldacre or More or Less are good at demonstrating how useless journalists generally are at any in-depth understanding of anything.
  • stodge said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    Morning all, surely?
    @stodge is in New Zealand, celebrating mid-summer's day.

    Surely we can all agree to envy him?
    When our son lived in New Zealand between 2003 - 2015, we often visited him at this time of year and it was rather surreal enjoying lovely weather and a festive time in a completely different environment to that which we were accustomed to
    It’s my first Christmas here and it’s culturally unsettling to hear all the carols promoting winter and snow when everyone is in shorts and the temperature is in the mid 20s.

    The other thing is those houses who have Christmas lights don’t have to put them on till 9pm whereas in London they go on at 4pm or when @Leon comes on here and complains how cold and dark it is.
    It is a cultural shock when first experienced, but as with all travel an interesting experience
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,209

    Golly, that Saudi doctor appears to have been radicalised by…the West?

    https://x.com/afneil/status/1870366678204223720?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

    Is it odd that he came to Germany in 2006, but only got refugee status in 2016? Someone working as a doctor in Germany wouldn't need to apply for refugee status as they would get permanent residency pretty easily I would have thought.
    Need some more details.

    Supposedly the attacker likes the AfD and Elon Musk...

    On which, Musk attacking Scholz has gone down like a bucket of cold sick around here. Nobody likes Scholz much, but if Musk carries on like this the SPD could get a bit of a rally-round boost.

    On the subject of security at Christmas markets: It's impossible - there are just way too many. You could stop people driving into the biggest and most famous, but then people would still be able to drive into the thousands of smaller (but also crowded) ones.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606

    Lol, Team Tommy went off a bit prematurely. Thank goodness we don’t have that sort of idiocy on PB.

    https://x.com/eyuplovely/status/1870296510363062554?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

    The Saudi perp gets weirder by the hour. Apparently some woman warned the German police two years ago that he was gonna commit mass murder. Because he hates Saudi Arabia “but hates Germans even more”

    Also he SEEMS to have expressed support for both Israel AND Hamas. He may be a new form of multi-radical. Radicalised in umpteen different directions all at once. Fantastic new innovation
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 8,972
    Eabhal said:

    Last night, some “reporting” here said the Xmas market attacker was a jihadist and that 11 people were dead. This morning, it appears that 2 people have died and the attacker was an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam campaigner who supported the AfD.

    The events in Magdeburg are horrific. It is a small comfort that they are not as bad as some reports. We again see why we should be cautious about rushing to conclusions.

    And it turns out I'm not the only one who thought there was something a bit odd about the video doing the rounds (if you slow it down to 0.5x speed it looks more normal, so whoever uploaded it to twitter was playing games). Even still, the car is doing some speed and we know chance of pedestrian survival drops rapidly at even just 40mph.

    The level of abuse and false representation I got for pointing this out was pretty miserable, for what was ultimately quite a minor point. I was accused of denying the terrorist attack even happened.

    I think PB is at it's best when people are allowed to cast a critical eye at things without being hounded off the site.
    Also, @Big_G_NorthWales , you suggested that my comments were "unnecessary conjecture" and accused me of speculation.

    That was a perverse interpretation of someone just trying to verify some of the lurid rumours and videos going round the internet. If it wasn't for people actually digging into this stuff, we'd all still think it was a jihadist and 11 people were dead.
  • When your children are talking about their forthcoming retirement…..

    Can be fun though. You can start giving advice again!

    My son in law retired 4 years ago !!!!

    I remember discussing his cash sum and annuity choices well
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    stodge said:

    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
    The current Danish coalition of Social Democrats, Liberals and Moderates trail the opposition parties by nearly 30 points in the current polls ahead of the election this November.

    The leading opposition parties are the Green Left and Liberal Alliance so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out next year.
    Are you sure?

    Polling shows the Danish SD in the lead as of December 15, 2024


    https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/denmark/
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,002
    DavidL said:

    stodge said:

    DavidL said:

    2024 was a year where, once again, our political class failed to get close to addressing our substantial economic problems, indeed they aggravated them in an exceptionally poor budget after the election gave a chance of a fresh start.

    I fear that in 2025 we will pay more of the consequences of this ineptitude with a modest recession, rising unemployment and virtually no growth at all. Sooner or later there is going to have to be a reset and it’s not going to be pleasant. We might keep things staggering on until 2026 unless Trump causes a crisis sooner than expected.

    I’d be interested in what you consider a “reset” and what such a thing looks like. The fundamental problem remains we want European or even Scandinavian level public services on American levels of taxation.

    Fifty years of propaganda telling us how lower personal taxation will be our economic salvation have got us the sum total of nowhere. Reeves would have been more economically honest had she raised basic rate tax to 25p and higher rate to 50p.

    Even now, we hear on a regular basis about the “evils” of public spending and how we can fire anywhere between 50-90% of civil servants with no consequences. I’m not disputing there isn’t waste in the public sector but there’s no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
    A reset will be when we are forced to stop borrowing more and more money from the markets because it becomes prohibitively expensive (of course on any rational analysis we are already there). That will require UK governments to live within their means, indeed more than within their means as the debts due to be repaid each year pile up.

    This will involve genuinely savage cuts in public expenditure such as we saw in Greece, Italy and, more recently Argentina. The very large, very comfortable state which looks after its own so well will simply not be sustainable any longer. This will also involve much higher levels of taxation to sustain genuinely essential public services. It is certainly not a tax cutters agenda Trump/Musk style, quite the opposite.

    Of course, such cuts in government largesse and tax increases will also drive the economy into short term recession. But, hopefully, we can come out of that with a more sustainable economy not built on our kids and their kids money to fuel our consumption.
    Thank you for the response. I would consider myself a deficit “hawk” inasmuch as I think the public finances should be balanced. I’m not opposed to borrowing for capital infrastructure projects but we should be trying to get what we spend and what we get in from tax receipts and elsewhere to be about the same.

    I thought the coalition wrong to make £5 in spending cuts for every £1 in tax rises but I wouldn’t support the opposite. The fact Reeves felt unable, despite a 20-point poll lead, to commit to raising income tax or VAT, illustrates the distortion of the debate. Instead, the thresholds are frozen and the NI rates are tinkered with which irritates a lot of people without really impacting on the problem.
  • Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Last night, some “reporting” here said the Xmas market attacker was a jihadist and that 11 people were dead. This morning, it appears that 2 people have died and the attacker was an ex-Muslim, anti-Islam campaigner who supported the AfD.

    The events in Magdeburg are horrific. It is a small comfort that they are not as bad as some reports. We again see why we should be cautious about rushing to conclusions.

    And it turns out I'm not the only one who thought there was something a bit odd about the video doing the rounds (if you slow it down to 0.5x speed it looks more normal, so whoever uploaded it to twitter was playing games). Even still, the car is doing some speed and we know chance of pedestrian survival drops rapidly at even just 40mph.

    The level of abuse and false representation I got for pointing this out was pretty miserable, for what was ultimately quite a minor point. I was accused of denying the terrorist attack even happened.

    I think PB is at it's best when people are allowed to cast a critical eye at things without being hounded off the site.
    Also, @Big_G_NorthWales , you suggested that my comments were "unnecessary conjecture" and accused me of speculation.

    That was a perverse interpretation of someone just trying to verify some of the lurid rumours and videos going round the internet. If it wasn't for people actually digging into this stuff, we'd all still think it was a jihadist and 11 people were dead.
    I remain of the opinion that your comments were unnecessary

    As for motive that is to be determined and I have no opinion on that
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,975
    ...

    Lol, Team Tommy went off a bit prematurely. Thank goodness we don’t have that sort of idiocy on PB.

    https://x.com/eyuplovely/status/1870296510363062554?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

    I didn't think where Tommy Ten Names resides these days one was allowed dangerous objects like sharp implements, narcotics, shoe laces and mobile phones. Perhaps his "team" operate via telepathy but surely a functioning brain is required for that to operate properly. Perhaps the message was corrupted in the ether.
  • TazTaz Posts: 15,094
    Economically it’s not just the folly of the Trumpdozer we need to worry about but the impact of Reeves catastrophic budget.

    The Times is excoriating about it today. Rightly so. Everything people said would happen is happening as a consequence.

    Her legacy will be first female chancellor and that’s it.

    We have gone from Business confidence at a 3 year high in August to a 4 year low. Jobs are being cut, prices are being increased, growth has been cut and interest rates will be higher for longer.

    What a doofus.

    https://www.thetimes.com/comment/the-times-view/article/the-times-view-on-xxx-96852drs8
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,959

    When your children are talking about their forthcoming retirement…..

    Can be fun though. You can start giving advice again!

    Excellent and I hope the same happens to me, but as I didn't have children until I was 41 and 46 I will be chuffed if that happens.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 28,975
    Leon said:

    Lol, Team Tommy went off a bit prematurely. Thank goodness we don’t have that sort of idiocy on PB.

    https://x.com/eyuplovely/status/1870296510363062554?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q

    The Saudi perp gets weirder by the hour. Apparently some woman warned the German police two years ago that he was gonna commit mass murder. Because he hates Saudi Arabia “but hates Germans even more”

    Also he SEEMS to have expressed support for both Israel AND Hamas. He may be a new form of multi-radical. Radicalised in umpteen different directions all at once. Fantastic new innovation
    Very confusing. Perhaps (like Nigel normally does) we should just refer to Andrew Tate's X account for full clarification.
  • 2025 would be so much better if we stopped taxing employment. Reduce the NI at the earliest opportunity so barriers to getting into work are reduced.

    Match the reduction in tax take due to reducing NI by substantially increasing NLW. Stop subsiding employers with in-work benefits. Work either pays or it doesn't. Get rid of these zombie companies that only exist by suckling on the tax payers teat.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,002
    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Leon said:

    stodge said:

    Evening all :)

    There are voices last evening arguing for drastic action to be taken against “radical Islam” but the usual lack of coherence over what form this would take.

    Are we advocating banning burqas and nijabs or do we go further? Do we close mosques and madrassas? There was also a reference or two to “forced assimilation”.

    Those who clearly see a lot of the current societal problems stemming from Islam need to explain what their version of resolving these problems looks like. Instead of constantly berating “liberals” and “centrist dads”, come out and tell us what you want or what you think Reform should be advocating.

    I explicitly said last night What we should do

    Copy the Danish Social Democrats
    The current Danish coalition of Social Democrats, Liberals and Moderates trail the opposition parties by nearly 30 points in the current polls ahead of the election this November.

    The leading opposition parties are the Green Left and Liberal Alliance so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out next year.
    Are you sure?

    Polling shows the Danish SD in the lead as of December 15, 2024


    https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/denmark/
    I’m sure the governing coalition led by the Social Democrats is 30 points behind the total of the opposition parties.

    Yes, the Social Democrats lead - albeit seven points down on the last election. They are considered a “red” party and the red parties lead the more liberal and conservative parties 51-43 so they could stay in Government and Frederiksen could remain Prime Minister but the other “red” parties will likely demand changes to the current policies as a price for supporting any new coalition.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 56,606
    edited December 21
    Taz said:

    Economically it’s not just the folly of the Trumpdozer we need to worry about but the impact of Reeves catastrophic budget.

    The Times is excoriating about it today. Rightly so. Everything people said would happen is happening as a consequence.

    Her legacy will be first female chancellor and that’s it.

    We have gone from Business confidence at a 3 year high in August to a 4 year low. Jobs are being cut, prices are being increased, growth has been cut and interest rates will be higher for longer.

    What a doofus.

    https://www.thetimes.com/comment/the-times-view/article/the-times-view-on-xxx-96852drs8

    Yes, Starmer/Reeves are like Truss/Kwarteng but in awful slo-mo. Which makes it worse. First you realise the PM is a dud, then you get the catastrophic budget. In fairness to Necklace Girl, at least she was done and dusted in ~1 month
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