We have a relative staying over Christmas. I'm not sure I shall be able to post here tomorrow, let alone do the Christmas crossword, which I usually enjoy. If I don't appear here in the next couple of days, then I'd like to wish every one Merry Christmas.
And a very Happy Christmas to you, too.
(I shall probably be able to sneak away from goose prep long enough to drop in tomorrow. First time I've cooked it, so any tips appreciated.)
As others have noted, cooking goose is mainly about managing the copious quantities of fat that result.
The only cooking tip is the legs and breast cook at different rates so some recipes recommend removing the legs and cooking them separately
Ha ! Already gut the butcher to do that. And have acquired a second smaller roasting tin to transfer surplus fat into ( & possibly roast veg in it). Anything else I need to watch out for ?
You may have enough to do a traditional chip pan on Boxing Day.
My late mother loved goose - partly for the fat to roast potatoes in. IANAE so I am not sure if you can get enough fat for the spuds off the same goose as is eaten with the potators, but others on PB will know.
You will get enough fat off one goose to roast the spuds of an entire street...
We have a relative staying over Christmas. I'm not sure I shall be able to post here tomorrow, let alone do the Christmas crossword, which I usually enjoy. If I don't appear here in the next couple of days, then I'd like to wish every one Merry Christmas.
And a very Happy Christmas to you, too.
(I shall probably be able to sneak away from goose prep long enough to drop in tomorrow. First time I've cooked it, so any tips appreciated.)
As others have noted, cooking goose is mainly about managing the copious quantities of fat that result.
The only cooking tip is the legs and breast cook at different rates so some recipes recommend removing the legs and cooking them separately
Ha ! Already gut the butcher to do that. And have acquired a second smaller roasting tin to transfer surplus fat into ( & possibly roast veg in it). Anything else I need to watch out for ?
You may have enough to do a traditional chip pan on Boxing Day.
My late mother loved goose - partly for the fat to roast potatoes in. IANAE so I am not sure if you can get enough fat for the spuds off the same goose as is eaten with the potators, but others on PB will know.
For now I've started on a large pan of cranberries for sauce. Debating whether to fortify with brandy or whisky this year...
Red wine, surely?
Did whisky last year (stir in after cooking) and it was ace.
Surprises me a bit, not a combination I'd have predicted would work. But if it works ...
It was a malt. (Cheapish, as I use it for cooking.)
Getting whisky to work in cooking is a real skill I think. I've certainly not got close. Hat's off.
Cranachan is about the only recipe where I'd use whisky - I'm not sure I'd even try otherwise. Home made trifle is much better with sherry than whisky, for instance.
I think I tried something with scallops and whisky. (And other things I've forgotten). The result was dreadful.
I think for cooking, the only things I have used whisky in have been Bonfire Toffee, cups of coffee, and possibly quite heavy game dishes (eg venison with the sort of sauce that might include things like black pudding and blackberries). Would it work with Haggis?
But TBH I have been pretty much completely off whisky since Alex Salmond & Friends offended me quite seriously with anti-English rhetoric before the referendum. Back in the day I used to enjoy small amounts of single malts like Glen Scotia and Auchentoshan.
A few years ago I got to visit the Auchentoshan distillery. After the tour, we had a tasting session. Unsurprisingly, the whisky I enjoyed the most was the most expensive.
Labour are in trouble (admittedly with a huge majority, trouble might not be the right word)
Their trouble is that they are a 20th century party with 19th century thinking. I think Starmer and Reeves have done an incredible job to polish the brasswork and sell us their steam engines, but it's all wrong.
The Tories are what? An 18th century party with some 20th century thinking, but a mindset from the 12th century.
The LDs - lost at sea
Greens - lost
Reform - euthanasia for the thinking man
How hard can it be to assemble something resembling thought and make a political argument for it?
Labour are the party for the public sector and most recent immigrants, the Tories are the party for the Leave voting private sector middle class and pensioners and army officers, the LDs are the party for the Remain voting private sector middle class and the Greens are the party for students and ex Corbynites and Reform are the party for the private sector white working class and increasingly small business owners and rank and file soldiers.
There, that is most bases covered who else needs a party we have missed?
Let me repost one link from yesterday as a Christmas Curiosity:
Novara Media's reporter interviewing Ashfield's potential Green Voter:
American GDP per capita is 76% higher than it is in the UK, I'd consider that far off.
In comparison 30 years ago our GDP per capita was genuinely not far off the USA, and considerably ahead of Canada, Australia and NZ rather than being behind the former two.
If a country like the US spends enormous amounts of money on, say, air conditioning, which they often don't really need, and generates a lot of GDP from that, is that a reliable way of measuring a country's economy? Or, alternatively, if they spend a lot of money on medical treatments that very often aren't necessary, the same question could be asked. I've often wondered about this, more from a philosophical point of view.
Its the same with who contributes taxes. The city of london likes to say how much their workers contribute in taxes but arguably the city of london is a giant skimming operation on the uk economy which siphons off wealth to itself. And dont forget if drug dealers were taxed they would be some of the biggest taxpayers.
American GDP per capita is 76% higher than it is in the UK, I'd consider that far off.
In comparison 30 years ago our GDP per capita was genuinely not far off the USA, and considerably ahead of Canada, Australia and NZ rather than being behind the former two.
Strip out the impact of the tech industry (which impacts gdp per capita but not median income per capita) and the US does a lot less well.
The budget and subsequent actions suggest, at least to me, it was good economics but bad politics.
There is a whole raft of structural decline to be reversed, be it roads, health, housing - just the nuts and bolts of a country. The idea that 'the market will fix it' is the mantra from a purists point of view but the Thames Water debacle shows that markets can be manipulated as politics and politicians constantly show themselves to be less able than the financial buccaneers.
Also where are economic cycles in all this? Germany looks like a classic case of on the downslope along with France so it's no surprise there would be a softening here due to the effects on our main trading partners. (42% of all exports)
... or did Gordon Brown actually achieve the demise of 'boom and bust'?
It was utterly terrible economics, hammering in taxes those who go to work, the productive part of the economy while leaving the rest of the economy untaxed.
You tax that which you wish to discourage, if you directly jack up taxes on employment/work you are discouraging work and NI is direct taxation on employment in the same way as fuel duty is direct taxation on fuel.
In a counterfactual world what Labour could have done is come in and taken the brave decision to merge National Insurance and Income Tax which would eliminate the 12% extra taxes that those who work for a living have to pay over those who don't.
That would be a 12% increase in Income Tax (without changing Income Tax rates) for those who aren't working on PAYE, while leaving PAYE workers tax rates unchanged. There's your tax rise for the nuts and bolts you want, if that's what you believe in, without hammering businesses or workers or people's pay for going to work.
And it would have been just as consistent with the manifesto as what they did.
I agree with this change and I am one of those pensioners who pay less tax than working people. However I suspect there are about 8 million votes at stake here. So good luck with that one.
So they increased 20 million people's taxes instead? The 20 million already paying more taxes than the 8 million? Besides how many of the 8 million are swing voters?
In 2024 Labour only got 20% of the votes of over-70s, with 46% going to the Tories and 15% going to Reform.
Labour won because they got the votes of working age people.
The incoming Labour government could and should have prioritised working age people who are heavily overtaxed and underfunded. Abolishing WFA was a tiny step in the right direction but then jacking up NI more than undid all the good of that, and won't win them any favour from the 80% of over-70 voters that were already not voting for them, or those that did that have already left them due to WFA.
They should have merged NI and Income Tax. Yes the pensioners would object, but that wouldn't change many votes since they were already not voting Labour anyway!
A credible program for reforming the country would tackle all the shibboleths the prior government couldn't because of the threat of the grey vote. Abolish unnecessary welfare life WFA, abolish unjustified tax breaks like not paying NI on pensions, and tackle issues like planning restrictions that prevent young people getting a home because it might affect the view of a pensioner - or their house prices.
Merging NI and income tax would just expand the dependency culture of welfare we have massively by ending the contributory element to JSA and state pensions which cannot be claimed without enough NI contributions or credits. Absolutely not and we should also be using NI to help fund social care too and ideally move to a French style use of more social insurance to fund healthcare more broadly as well
There is no contributory element already since you get NI "credits" for being unemployed and living on welfare.
There is absolutely no reason to have NI exist to have contributions. Just set contributions based on Income Tax paid if that's what you want.
All the arrangements for Income Tax and NI need reviewing. As do the mechanisms for 'reclaiming' over-payments from those receiving benefits. They are all the result of piecemeal changes and someone needs to have a good look at them and rationalise the whole thing.
They did review the whole issue of benefits and called it Universal Credit. It was introduced at the 2010 Conservative Party conference by Ian Duncan Smith who is responsible for a lot of it. The mechanism is a form of social net and the taper effect (taking away 'overpayment') is core. Even 14 years later it is not fully implemented so a suggestion of waving a magic wand and replacing it within one or even two parliaments does not stand up to critical analysis. National Insurance, by the way, was introduced by Winston Churchill.
Your idea is to make work pay by making the poor, poorer is an interesting concept. Perhaps stand for parliament on that platform and like IDS bring in new legislation to replace Universal Credit.
Universal credit was a step in the right direction, but only a partial step and the taper is what causes the poverty trap that means people think its not worth working, because its not for them.
Universal credit was introduced in one Parliament, so its successor can be. Universal credit was announced in 2010, legislated for in 2012 and began to be rolled out in 2013 so there's absolutely no reason why it can't be replaced in one, let alone 2, Parliaments.
The solution is elegant in its simplicity, but will piss off many vested interests. Just as UC merged many benefits together, we need to do the same with the tax system. Merge UC, Income Tax and National Insurance into one system.
UC has taken us partway there. Time to finish the job. Merge UC with Income Tax and NI so that there's only one income-related tax rather than multiple taxes/tapers that trap people in poverty.
That way work pays and people will work, because its in their own interests to do so.
No, merge income tax with UC and you will just encourage dependence on the latter from payers of the former for life.
NI should be ringfenced for JSA and the state pension and NI credits scrapped so we finally start to shift towards a more contributory welfare system. We can then start funding more healthcare from social insurance as most OECD nations do too
You are pigheaded and completely wrong.
Listen to anyone who doesn't work or only works minimal hours and ask them truthfully why that is and they'll tell you - its not worth them working more.
That's because they have to pay taper and Income Tax and National Insurance and ... if they work.
Have only one flat tax rate, no tapers, and people will look at extra employment and think that they get to keep what they work if they work . . . so they will do so, because its in their own best interest to do so.
People do what suits them best. If you make it worthwhile not to work, don't complain when people don't work.
No, universal credit was supposed to ensure that as you earnt more you didn't lose all your benefits at the same time.
A flat tax will of course benefit the highest earners the most as it effectively ends higher rate and additional rate income tax and higher rate NI, so you will get less income from them and therefore will have to look at which cuts to public services and welfare you will have to make as a result.
It would make next to no difference to lower earners as they would never reach the higher rate threshold most likely anyway and if they are earning more a tax rate of 20% would not make much difference either if benefits were also withdrawn gradually do rather than ended all at once as their income rose.
End JSA and the state pension which are based on NI contributions and just have UC and state pension credit and you make it more likely some will largely be dependent on the state for life and often by choice
Don't be farcical.
Low earners are on a combined tax rate of 55% taper, plus 20% income tax, plus 8% National Insurance.
What rate are higher earners on?
Higher earners are on 40% income tax, the highest rate earners on additional rate of 45% and up to 10% NI.
Lowest earners on £12,570 or less will pay no income tax and no National Insurance at all
Yeah, that's all they're paying. An absolute pittance on marginal income gains compared to what those on UC face.
Anyone working just 21 hours a week on minimum wage will be paying 20% Income Tax and 8% NI and 55% Taper on everything they earn extra if they work any more hours than that.
And you still struggle to understand why people don't want to work more hours than that? Gee, I wonder why it is? 🤦♂️
A lot of people on UC pay no tax at all as I have shown you.
Even those on 21 hours a week minimum wage work see the clear majority of any extra income they earn not taxed and can still keep almost half their UC benefits now as well
Oh for f***s sake, that's not the f***ing problem and you know it.
Yes work a minimum amount of hours and you get to keep what you work for and your benefits.
Do any more than the minimum and you lose your benefits and get taxed.
So people don't do more than the minimum.
Telling people you can work a few hours but we'll punitively take all your income off you if you work more than that means people won't work any more than the minimum because they're entirely rational. Then you wonder why people aren't working. 🤦♂️
You don't lose all your benefits as you have just shown, otherwise it would be 100% taper straight away.
After you hit the threshold it is virtually a 100% combined taper yes, especially when you add in extra costs, which is why people stop at the threshold.
Do you want them stopping at the threshold claiming the maximum amount of benefits for the minimum amount of work, or do you want them to work full time?
45% of benefits kept even at that threshold is not 'virtually' a 100% combined taper at all.
Or as I said earlier if you like the US model so much we could just scrap universal credit entirely, so you get 6 months of unemployment benefits only and then you either work or starve and try and queue at the foodbank (with a few foodstamps if you are lucky and have children)
Where the hell do you get 45% kept? Can you not add up?
Add Income Tax, NI and Taper together.
If we had the US model they would get 100% taper as they would get no benefits at all beyond 6 months of unemployment as I said and they would either find paid work, find a food bank or starve.
Even the unemployment benefits for that 6 months will only be received if they have made enough insurance contributions from previous employment.
But we don't have the US model, we have the UK model where we tell people that if they work more than minimum time the Treasury will tax them at almost 100% rate for doing so on any marginal income above the minimum.
So millions don't work more than the minimum, because people are rational human beings.
Fix it. We don't need to just say "we're better than America on one metric", we can do better than we are today. Do you want people who can to work full time or not? If you do, they need to be rewarded for doing so, not punished.
Which either comes from taxpayers on average income and above paying for more in work benefits for the lower paid or even lower taxes for the lowest earners which in turn means public service cuts to fund them
Or it comes from reforming the cliff edges so that those on minimum hours find it worthwhile to work full time thus the Treasury gets extra taxes from those people changing their actions and the state cuts its costs.
And working full time is good for health too, so costs on the NHS come down as people aren't playing the system driving themselves sick and living off benefits.
You could call it the Laffer Curve.
How do you do that? By maintaining benefits for those in on lower incomes funded by higher taxes on those on average incomes or above. Or by as I said cutting public spending and welfare for those out of work to fund lower taxes for those on lower incomes in work.
Now that might mean lower NHS costs by more in work but that is unlikely to fund it all
So hybrid cars will be banned as will petrol and diesel cars then by 2030 under Ed Miliband's wonderful new plans.
Fine if you can afford Tesla's latest electric car or you live in an inner city with excellent public transport, a nightmare for drivers everywhere elese
Banned? You’re suggesting the police will come and confiscate them?
Silly boy.
It will be illegal to produce new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars from 2030 under Miliband's plans yes
It’s depressing. And funny at the same time. You know for a fact that “banned” is not the same as “millions and millions and millions of these cars continuing to be driven for decades more”. You know for a fact that this policy was created by your own party. By your own Prime Minister. As voted for and supported by you.
And here you are. Spouting idiocy like “banned .” Because of your abject fear that Reform have already supplanted your party in the anyone listening and having any relevance race.
Nope, the Tories moved the date to 2035, it is Labour who have moved the date back to 2030 for the ban. Reform have at least ensured that from your perspective the next right of centre government we get in this nation will be far nastier than any Tory government we have had since Thatcher
1. Tories set the date to stop selling new ones as 2030. That is not them being banned in 2030. 2. Tories then changed the stop selling date to 2035. That is not them being banned in 2035 3. You would dance on a pinhead, spouting nonsensical sophistry if you thought there was a vote in it. There isn’t.
Compare and contrast Reform - telling bullshit straight up - with the Tories - selling sophistry and lies. No wonder they ate your party.
Christmas dinner at home this year. We are having duck, as we have done several times in the past.
I have also managed to dodge the get-together with far too many in-laws on Boxing Day.
So for an antisocial bugger such as myself, all should be good.
Advice required. Do I finish the Christmas Day festivities with an Ardgour Ales Fìon an Eòrna, an 11% barley wine or a Five Kingdoms Dark Storm, a 6.9% stout?
So hybrid cars will be banned as will petrol and diesel cars then by 2030 under Ed Miliband's wonderful new plans.
Fine if you can afford Tesla's latest electric car or you live in an inner city with excellent public transport, a nightmare for drivers everywhere elese
Banned? You’re suggesting the police will come and confiscate them?
Silly boy.
It will be illegal to produce new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars from 2030 under Miliband's plans yes
It’s depressing. And funny at the same time. You know for a fact that “banned” is not the same as “millions and millions and millions of these cars continuing to be driven for decades more”. You know for a fact that this policy was created by your own party. By your own Prime Minister. As voted for and supported by you.
And here you are. Spouting idiocy like “banned .” Because of your abject fear that Reform have already supplanted your party in the anyone listening and having any relevance race.
Nope, the Tories moved the date to 2035, it is Labour who have moved the date back to 2030 for the ban. Reform have at least ensured that from your perspective the next right of centre government we get in this nation will be far nastier than any Tory government we have had since Thatcher
1. Tories set the date to stop selling new ones as 2030. That is not them being banned in 2030. 2. Tories then changed the stop selling date to 2035. That is not them being banned in 2035 3. You would dance on a pinhead, spouting nonsensical sophistry if you thought there was a vote in it. There isn’t.
Compare and contrast Reform - telling bullshit straight up - with the Tories - selling sophistry and lies. No wonder they ate your party.
They haven't, 'ate our party' at all. In fact the main swing in polls since July has been Labour to Reform with the Tories little changed
Christmas dinner at home this year. We are having duck, as we have done several times in the past.
I have also managed to dodge the get-together with far too many in-laws on Boxing Day.
So for an antisocial bugger such as myself, all should be good.
Advice required. Do I finish the Christmas Day festivities with an Ardgour Ales Fìon an Eòrna, an 11% barley wine or a Five Kingdoms Dark Storm, a 6.9% stout?
The budget and subsequent actions suggest, at least to me, it was good economics but bad politics.
There is a whole raft of structural decline to be reversed, be it roads, health, housing - just the nuts and bolts of a country. The idea that 'the market will fix it' is the mantra from a purists point of view but the Thames Water debacle shows that markets can be manipulated as politics and politicians constantly show themselves to be less able than the financial buccaneers.
Also where are economic cycles in all this? Germany looks like a classic case of on the downslope along with France so it's no surprise there would be a softening here due to the effects on our main trading partners. (42% of all exports)
... or did Gordon Brown actually achieve the demise of 'boom and bust'?
It was utterly terrible economics, hammering in taxes those who go to work, the productive part of the economy while leaving the rest of the economy untaxed.
You tax that which you wish to discourage, if you directly jack up taxes on employment/work you are discouraging work and NI is direct taxation on employment in the same way as fuel duty is direct taxation on fuel.
In a counterfactual world what Labour could have done is come in and taken the brave decision to merge National Insurance and Income Tax which would eliminate the 12% extra taxes that those who work for a living have to pay over those who don't.
That would be a 12% increase in Income Tax (without changing Income Tax rates) for those who aren't working on PAYE, while leaving PAYE workers tax rates unchanged. There's your tax rise for the nuts and bolts you want, if that's what you believe in, without hammering businesses or workers or people's pay for going to work.
And it would have been just as consistent with the manifesto as what they did.
I agree with this change and I am one of those pensioners who pay less tax than working people. However I suspect there are about 8 million votes at stake here. So good luck with that one.
So they increased 20 million people's taxes instead? The 20 million already paying more taxes than the 8 million? Besides how many of the 8 million are swing voters?
In 2024 Labour only got 20% of the votes of over-70s, with 46% going to the Tories and 15% going to Reform.
Labour won because they got the votes of working age people.
The incoming Labour government could and should have prioritised working age people who are heavily overtaxed and underfunded. Abolishing WFA was a tiny step in the right direction but then jacking up NI more than undid all the good of that, and won't win them any favour from the 80% of over-70 voters that were already not voting for them, or those that did that have already left them due to WFA.
They should have merged NI and Income Tax. Yes the pensioners would object, but that wouldn't change many votes since they were already not voting Labour anyway!
A credible program for reforming the country would tackle all the shibboleths the prior government couldn't because of the threat of the grey vote. Abolish unnecessary welfare life WFA, abolish unjustified tax breaks like not paying NI on pensions, and tackle issues like planning restrictions that prevent young people getting a home because it might affect the view of a pensioner - or their house prices.
Merging NI and income tax would just expand the dependency culture of welfare we have massively by ending the contributory element to JSA and state pensions which cannot be claimed without enough NI contributions or credits. Absolutely not and we should also be using NI to help fund social care too and ideally move to a French style use of more social insurance to fund healthcare more broadly as well
There is no contributory element already since you get NI "credits" for being unemployed and living on welfare.
There is absolutely no reason to have NI exist to have contributions. Just set contributions based on Income Tax paid if that's what you want.
All the arrangements for Income Tax and NI need reviewing. As do the mechanisms for 'reclaiming' over-payments from those receiving benefits. They are all the result of piecemeal changes and someone needs to have a good look at them and rationalise the whole thing.
They did review the whole issue of benefits and called it Universal Credit. It was introduced at the 2010 Conservative Party conference by Ian Duncan Smith who is responsible for a lot of it. The mechanism is a form of social net and the taper effect (taking away 'overpayment') is core. Even 14 years later it is not fully implemented so a suggestion of waving a magic wand and replacing it within one or even two parliaments does not stand up to critical analysis. National Insurance, by the way, was introduced by Winston Churchill.
Your idea is to make work pay by making the poor, poorer is an interesting concept. Perhaps stand for parliament on that platform and like IDS bring in new legislation to replace Universal Credit.
Universal credit was a step in the right direction, but only a partial step and the taper is what causes the poverty trap that means people think its not worth working, because its not for them.
Universal credit was introduced in one Parliament, so its successor can be. Universal credit was announced in 2010, legislated for in 2012 and began to be rolled out in 2013 so there's absolutely no reason why it can't be replaced in one, let alone 2, Parliaments.
The solution is elegant in its simplicity, but will piss off many vested interests. Just as UC merged many benefits together, we need to do the same with the tax system. Merge UC, Income Tax and National Insurance into one system.
UC has taken us partway there. Time to finish the job. Merge UC with Income Tax and NI so that there's only one income-related tax rather than multiple taxes/tapers that trap people in poverty.
That way work pays and people will work, because its in their own interests to do so.
No, merge income tax with UC and you will just encourage dependence on the latter from payers of the former for life.
NI should be ringfenced for JSA and the state pension and NI credits scrapped so we finally start to shift towards a more contributory welfare system. We can then start funding more healthcare from social insurance as most OECD nations do too
You are pigheaded and completely wrong.
Listen to anyone who doesn't work or only works minimal hours and ask them truthfully why that is and they'll tell you - its not worth them working more.
That's because they have to pay taper and Income Tax and National Insurance and ... if they work.
Have only one flat tax rate, no tapers, and people will look at extra employment and think that they get to keep what they work if they work . . . so they will do so, because its in their own best interest to do so.
People do what suits them best. If you make it worthwhile not to work, don't complain when people don't work.
No, universal credit was supposed to ensure that as you earnt more you didn't lose all your benefits at the same time.
A flat tax will of course benefit the highest earners the most as it effectively ends higher rate and additional rate income tax and higher rate NI, so you will get less income from them and therefore will have to look at which cuts to public services and welfare you will have to make as a result.
It would make next to no difference to lower earners as they would never reach the higher rate threshold most likely anyway and if they are earning more a tax rate of 20% would not make much difference either if benefits were also withdrawn gradually do rather than ended all at once as their income rose.
End JSA and the state pension which are based on NI contributions and just have UC and state pension credit and you make it more likely some will largely be dependent on the state for life and often by choice
Don't be farcical.
Low earners are on a combined tax rate of 55% taper, plus 20% income tax, plus 8% National Insurance.
What rate are higher earners on?
Higher earners are on 40% income tax, the highest rate earners on additional rate of 45% and up to 10% NI.
Lowest earners on £12,570 or less will pay no income tax and no National Insurance at all
Yeah, that's all they're paying. An absolute pittance on marginal income gains compared to what those on UC face.
Anyone working just 21 hours a week on minimum wage will be paying 20% Income Tax and 8% NI and 55% Taper on everything they earn extra if they work any more hours than that.
And you still struggle to understand why people don't want to work more hours than that? Gee, I wonder why it is? 🤦♂️
A lot of people on UC pay no tax at all as I have shown you.
Even those on 21 hours a week minimum wage work see the clear majority of any extra income they earn not taxed and can still keep almost half their UC benefits now as well
Oh for f***s sake, that's not the f***ing problem and you know it.
Yes work a minimum amount of hours and you get to keep what you work for and your benefits.
Do any more than the minimum and you lose your benefits and get taxed.
So people don't do more than the minimum.
Telling people you can work a few hours but we'll punitively take all your income off you if you work more than that means people won't work any more than the minimum because they're entirely rational. Then you wonder why people aren't working. 🤦♂️
You don't lose all your benefits as you have just shown, otherwise it would be 100% taper straight away.
After you hit the threshold it is virtually a 100% combined taper yes, especially when you add in extra costs, which is why people stop at the threshold.
Do you want them stopping at the threshold claiming the maximum amount of benefits for the minimum amount of work, or do you want them to work full time?
45% of benefits kept even at that threshold is not 'virtually' a 100% combined taper at all.
Or as I said earlier if you like the US model so much we could just scrap universal credit entirely, so you get 6 months of unemployment benefits only and then you either work or starve and try and queue at the foodbank (with a few foodstamps if you are lucky and have children)
Bart's point is that if you working, say, 110 hours per month on minimum wage per month and you started out on UC with assistance for housing, you'll be getting a reduction in your benefits of 55p per pound over £404 per month. Plus NI of 12p in the pound over £1048, and Income Tax of 20p in the pound over £1048.
You're offered another 10 hours per month.
So going from £1146.20 per month to earning £1250.40 per month would see the amount of money you receive per month increasing by £13.55.
Your income tax would be £20.84 on those extra earnings, your NI would be £12.50, and your UC would be reduced by £57.31.
Those ten extra hours would be worth £1.36 per hour. You'd keep 13% of your extra earnings. If the top rate of tax was 87%, do you think that might have an effect on the highest earners and the amount of work they do?
So hybrid cars will be banned as will petrol and diesel cars then by 2030 under Ed Miliband's wonderful new plans.
Fine if you can afford Tesla's latest electric car or you live in an inner city with excellent public transport, a nightmare for drivers everywhere elese
Banned? You’re suggesting the police will come and confiscate them?
Silly boy.
It will be illegal to produce new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars from 2030 under Miliband's plans yes
It’s depressing. And funny at the same time. You know for a fact that “banned” is not the same as “millions and millions and millions of these cars continuing to be driven for decades more”. You know for a fact that this policy was created by your own party. By your own Prime Minister. As voted for and supported by you.
And here you are. Spouting idiocy like “banned .” Because of your abject fear that Reform have already supplanted your party in the anyone listening and having any relevance race.
Nope, the Tories moved the date to 2035, it is Labour who have moved the date back to 2030 for the ban. Reform have at least ensured that from your perspective the next right of centre government we get in this nation will be far nastier than any Tory government we have had since Thatcher
1. Tories set the date to stop selling new ones as 2030. That is not them being banned in 2030. 2. Tories then changed the stop selling date to 2035. That is not them being banned in 2035 3. You would dance on a pinhead, spouting nonsensical sophistry if you thought there was a vote in it. There isn’t.
Compare and contrast Reform - telling bullshit straight up - with the Tories - selling sophistry and lies. No wonder they ate your party.
They haven't, 'ate our party' at all. In fact the main swing in polls since July has been Labour to Reform with the Tories little changed
And you state that with such confidence. Indeed the entire vote for Badenoch and her actions as leader demonstrate that you have definitely vanquished Farage and face no existential threat at all. Huzzah.
"In 2024, EVs must make up 22% of a carmaker's car sales, and 10% of van sales. This target is set to rise. Firms failing to meet these targets face a £15,000 fine per sale."
That is, of course, a continuation of the previous government's stupid decision.
If European governments had started of with the explicit intention of turning the whole car market into Chinese white goods, it’s different to see anything they’d have done differently than what has actually been done.
The Cult of Outsourcing - “Running a battery factory looks jolly difficult and expensive. Just buy some of those Chinese chaps. Negotiating a price for a product I don’t understand? That’s Real Work (TM) with lots of document in written in legalese, instead of that science nonsense.”
Cult of Onshoring - get those clever Chinese chaps to build a plant here, and learn from them.
That's what they did with us a quarter of a century back.
Are the UK government insisting on British ‘local partners’ for the Chinese companies investing in Britain, and are they intending to steal the Chinese IP and have the factory run ‘ghost’ shifts at the weekends?
There's no reason we shouldn't insist on local partners. That seems to be the approach Europe is starting to take.
Without that, then no deal.
Steady on, this is Sir Britain-hater we're talking about.
I've no great confidence that this government will pursue such deals, but they certainly should.
For the last forty years our being "open to investment" has largely meant selling off assets to overseas buyers, who often simply extract what they can and jettison the detritus.
It's not a party political issue - rather how do we best ensure our economic interests. Our governments have not done a great job of that for decades.
Well said. And I agree it's not party political, Tories have sold off just as much family silver for a few pennies as Labour.
The budget and subsequent actions suggest, at least to me, it was good economics but bad politics.
There is a whole raft of structural decline to be reversed, be it roads, health, housing - just the nuts and bolts of a country. The idea that 'the market will fix it' is the mantra from a purists point of view but the Thames Water debacle shows that markets can be manipulated as politics and politicians constantly show themselves to be less able than the financial buccaneers.
Also where are economic cycles in all this? Germany looks like a classic case of on the downslope along with France so it's no surprise there would be a softening here due to the effects on our main trading partners. (42% of all exports)
... or did Gordon Brown actually achieve the demise of 'boom and bust'?
It was utterly terrible economics, hammering in taxes those who go to work, the productive part of the economy while leaving the rest of the economy untaxed.
You tax that which you wish to discourage, if you directly jack up taxes on employment/work you are discouraging work and NI is direct taxation on employment in the same way as fuel duty is direct taxation on fuel.
In a counterfactual world what Labour could have done is come in and taken the brave decision to merge National Insurance and Income Tax which would eliminate the 12% extra taxes that those who work for a living have to pay over those who don't.
That would be a 12% increase in Income Tax (without changing Income Tax rates) for those who aren't working on PAYE, while leaving PAYE workers tax rates unchanged. There's your tax rise for the nuts and bolts you want, if that's what you believe in, without hammering businesses or workers or people's pay for going to work.
And it would have been just as consistent with the manifesto as what they did.
I agree with this change and I am one of those pensioners who pay less tax than working people. However I suspect there are about 8 million votes at stake here. So good luck with that one.
So they increased 20 million people's taxes instead? The 20 million already paying more taxes than the 8 million? Besides how many of the 8 million are swing voters?
In 2024 Labour only got 20% of the votes of over-70s, with 46% going to the Tories and 15% going to Reform.
Labour won because they got the votes of working age people.
The incoming Labour government could and should have prioritised working age people who are heavily overtaxed and underfunded. Abolishing WFA was a tiny step in the right direction but then jacking up NI more than undid all the good of that, and won't win them any favour from the 80% of over-70 voters that were already not voting for them, or those that did that have already left them due to WFA.
They should have merged NI and Income Tax. Yes the pensioners would object, but that wouldn't change many votes since they were already not voting Labour anyway!
A credible program for reforming the country would tackle all the shibboleths the prior government couldn't because of the threat of the grey vote. Abolish unnecessary welfare life WFA, abolish unjustified tax breaks like not paying NI on pensions, and tackle issues like planning restrictions that prevent young people getting a home because it might affect the view of a pensioner - or their house prices.
Merging NI and income tax would just expand the dependency culture of welfare we have massively by ending the contributory element to JSA and state pensions which cannot be claimed without enough NI contributions or credits. Absolutely not and we should also be using NI to help fund social care too and ideally move to a French style use of more social insurance to fund healthcare more broadly as well
There is no contributory element already since you get NI "credits" for being unemployed and living on welfare.
There is absolutely no reason to have NI exist to have contributions. Just set contributions based on Income Tax paid if that's what you want.
All the arrangements for Income Tax and NI need reviewing. As do the mechanisms for 'reclaiming' over-payments from those receiving benefits. They are all the result of piecemeal changes and someone needs to have a good look at them and rationalise the whole thing.
They did review the whole issue of benefits and called it Universal Credit. It was introduced at the 2010 Conservative Party conference by Ian Duncan Smith who is responsible for a lot of it. The mechanism is a form of social net and the taper effect (taking away 'overpayment') is core. Even 14 years later it is not fully implemented so a suggestion of waving a magic wand and replacing it within one or even two parliaments does not stand up to critical analysis. National Insurance, by the way, was introduced by Winston Churchill.
Your idea is to make work pay by making the poor, poorer is an interesting concept. Perhaps stand for parliament on that platform and like IDS bring in new legislation to replace Universal Credit.
Universal credit was a step in the right direction, but only a partial step and the taper is what causes the poverty trap that means people think its not worth working, because its not for them.
Universal credit was introduced in one Parliament, so its successor can be. Universal credit was announced in 2010, legislated for in 2012 and began to be rolled out in 2013 so there's absolutely no reason why it can't be replaced in one, let alone 2, Parliaments.
The solution is elegant in its simplicity, but will piss off many vested interests. Just as UC merged many benefits together, we need to do the same with the tax system. Merge UC, Income Tax and National Insurance into one system.
UC has taken us partway there. Time to finish the job. Merge UC with Income Tax and NI so that there's only one income-related tax rather than multiple taxes/tapers that trap people in poverty.
That way work pays and people will work, because its in their own interests to do so.
No, merge income tax with UC and you will just encourage dependence on the latter from payers of the former for life.
NI should be ringfenced for JSA and the state pension and NI credits scrapped so we finally start to shift towards a more contributory welfare system. We can then start funding more healthcare from social insurance as most OECD nations do too
You are pigheaded and completely wrong.
Listen to anyone who doesn't work or only works minimal hours and ask them truthfully why that is and they'll tell you - its not worth them working more.
That's because they have to pay taper and Income Tax and National Insurance and ... if they work.
Have only one flat tax rate, no tapers, and people will look at extra employment and think that they get to keep what they work if they work . . . so they will do so, because its in their own best interest to do so.
People do what suits them best. If you make it worthwhile not to work, don't complain when people don't work.
No, universal credit was supposed to ensure that as you earnt more you didn't lose all your benefits at the same time.
A flat tax will of course benefit the highest earners the most as it effectively ends higher rate and additional rate income tax and higher rate NI, so you will get less income from them and therefore will have to look at which cuts to public services and welfare you will have to make as a result.
It would make next to no difference to lower earners as they would never reach the higher rate threshold most likely anyway and if they are earning more a tax rate of 20% would not make much difference either if benefits were also withdrawn gradually do rather than ended all at once as their income rose.
End JSA and the state pension which are based on NI contributions and just have UC and state pension credit and you make it more likely some will largely be dependent on the state for life and often by choice
Don't be farcical.
Low earners are on a combined tax rate of 55% taper, plus 20% income tax, plus 8% National Insurance.
What rate are higher earners on?
Higher earners are on 40% income tax, the highest rate earners on additional rate of 45% and up to 10% NI.
Lowest earners on £12,570 or less will pay no income tax and no National Insurance at all
Yeah, that's all they're paying. An absolute pittance on marginal income gains compared to what those on UC face.
Anyone working just 21 hours a week on minimum wage will be paying 20% Income Tax and 8% NI and 55% Taper on everything they earn extra if they work any more hours than that.
And you still struggle to understand why people don't want to work more hours than that? Gee, I wonder why it is? 🤦♂️
A lot of people on UC pay no tax at all as I have shown you.
Even those on 21 hours a week minimum wage work see the clear majority of any extra income they earn not taxed and can still keep almost half their UC benefits now as well
Oh for f***s sake, that's not the f***ing problem and you know it.
Yes work a minimum amount of hours and you get to keep what you work for and your benefits.
Do any more than the minimum and you lose your benefits and get taxed.
So people don't do more than the minimum.
Telling people you can work a few hours but we'll punitively take all your income off you if you work more than that means people won't work any more than the minimum because they're entirely rational. Then you wonder why people aren't working. 🤦♂️
You don't lose all your benefits as you have just shown, otherwise it would be 100% taper straight away.
After you hit the threshold it is virtually a 100% combined taper yes, especially when you add in extra costs, which is why people stop at the threshold.
Do you want them stopping at the threshold claiming the maximum amount of benefits for the minimum amount of work, or do you want them to work full time?
45% of benefits kept even at that threshold is not 'virtually' a 100% combined taper at all.
Or as I said earlier if you like the US model so much we could just scrap universal credit entirely, so you get 6 months of unemployment benefits only and then you either work or starve and try and queue at the foodbank (with a few foodstamps if you are lucky and have children)
Bart's point is that if you working, say, 110 hours per month on minimum wage per month and you started out on UC with assistance for housing, you'll be getting a reduction in your benefits of 55p per pound over £404 per month. Plus NI of 12p in the pound over £1048, and Income Tax of 20p in the pound over £1048.
You're offered another 10 hours per month.
So going from £1146.20 per month to earning £1250.40 per month would see the amount of money you receive per month increasing by £13.55.
Your income tax would be £20.84 on those extra earnings, your NI would be £12.50, and your UC would be reduced by £57.31.
Those ten extra hours would be worth £1.36 per hour. You'd keep 13% of your extra earnings. If the top rate of tax was 87%, do you think that might have an effect on the highest earners and the amount of work they do?
So you still get a net increase in income even if small from those extra hours.
Of course we could also slash the welfare state US style so you get no UC and no benefits at all after 6 months of unemployment and cannot claim unemployment benefits again unless sufficient insurance contributions made while working if you really want to deal with the taper problem.
The welfare savings could also then be used to cut income taxes for the lower paid, then extra hours worked really would boost your income and not working at all for more than 6 months sends you to the foodbank
"In 2024, EVs must make up 22% of a carmaker's car sales, and 10% of van sales. This target is set to rise. Firms failing to meet these targets face a £15,000 fine per sale."
That is, of course, a continuation of the previous government's stupid decision.
If European governments had started of with the explicit intention of turning the whole car market into Chinese white goods, it’s different to see anything they’d have done differently than what has actually been done.
The Cult of Outsourcing - “Running a battery factory looks jolly difficult and expensive. Just buy some of those Chinese chaps. Negotiating a price for a product I don’t understand? That’s Real Work (TM) with lots of document in written in legalese, instead of that science nonsense.”
Cult of Onshoring - get those clever Chinese chaps to build a plant here, and learn from them.
That's what they did with us a quarter of a century back.
Are the UK government insisting on British ‘local partners’ for the Chinese companies investing in Britain, and are they intending to steal the Chinese IP and have the factory run ‘ghost’ shifts at the weekends?
There's no reason we shouldn't insist on local partners. That seems to be the approach Europe is starting to take.
Without that, then no deal.
Steady on, this is Sir Britain-hater we're talking about.
I've no great confidence that this government will pursue such deals, but they certainly should.
For the last forty years our being "open to investment" has largely meant selling off assets to overseas buyers, who often simply extract what they can and jettison the detritus.
It's not a party political issue - rather how do we best ensure our economic interests. Our governments have not done a great job of that for decades.
Well said. And I agree it's not party political, Tories have sold off just as much family silver for a few pennies as Labour.
Tories sold off the family silver, but Gordon Brown managed to sell off the gold.
So hybrid cars will be banned as will petrol and diesel cars then by 2030 under Ed Miliband's wonderful new plans.
Fine if you can afford Tesla's latest electric car or you live in an inner city with excellent public transport, a nightmare for drivers everywhere elese
Banned? You’re suggesting the police will come and confiscate them?
Silly boy.
It will be illegal to produce new petrol, diesel or hybrid cars from 2030 under Miliband's plans yes
It’s depressing. And funny at the same time. You know for a fact that “banned” is not the same as “millions and millions and millions of these cars continuing to be driven for decades more”. You know for a fact that this policy was created by your own party. By your own Prime Minister. As voted for and supported by you.
And here you are. Spouting idiocy like “banned .” Because of your abject fear that Reform have already supplanted your party in the anyone listening and having any relevance race.
Nope, the Tories moved the date to 2035, it is Labour who have moved the date back to 2030 for the ban. Reform have at least ensured that from your perspective the next right of centre government we get in this nation will be far nastier than any Tory government we have had since Thatcher
1. Tories set the date to stop selling new ones as 2030. That is not them being banned in 2030. 2. Tories then changed the stop selling date to 2035. That is not them being banned in 2035 3. You would dance on a pinhead, spouting nonsensical sophistry if you thought there was a vote in it. There isn’t.
Compare and contrast Reform - telling bullshit straight up - with the Tories - selling sophistry and lies. No wonder they ate your party.
They haven't, 'ate our party' at all. In fact the main swing in polls since July has been Labour to Reform with the Tories little changed
And you state that with such confidence. Indeed the entire vote for Badenoch and her actions as leader demonstrate that you have definitely vanquished Farage and face no existential threat at all. Huzzah.
In the unlikely event Reform did overtake the Tories as the main alternative to Labour it would not be to your liking but would shift the Overton window further to the right.
At the moment though Labour, the Tories and Reform are all in the 20-30% range and under FPTP that means the main gain in seats would be for the Tories from Labour
If contractors want the same employment rights as staff, they could try paying the same taxes as staff.
And not claiming their commute as a business expense.
Not sure what prompted that rant...but UK contractor scene Outside IR35 - ltd company. no employment rights,, can only claim travel to temporary, not main, work site. Control over pay, dividends and pension payments. Inside ir35 - no employment rights, money has to go through unregulated umbrella company (best situation just incompetent not actively defrauding you) no control over pay or pension but full liability for any tax nonpayment issues. This is quite literally having your money paid to someone like Doug Barrowman to take his cut, relying on them to make tax deductions and pay them to HMRC, then pay you. Fixed term contract - basically staff, some employee benefits but not full employment rights. Probably staff rate.
1 and 3 are OK. 2 is a totally fucked up situation that just created a bigger space for a redundant middle-party to take a cut. Typical Fucking Tories.
Abolish NI the IR35 issue goes away.
Considering NI is a tax paid to the state it should have absolutely nothing to do with "employment rights" which are paid by the employer, not the state.
Don't disagree but politically impossible I'd say. The wealthy with mainly investment income would whip up the pensioner vote in outrage, JSP would have to be taken out by a sniper to save the nation's hearing.
80% of pensioners didn't vote Labour at the last election. If it were up to pensioners alone we'd have a landslide Tory government.
Labour shouldn't be kowtowing to the grey vote. If they do, they deserve to lose the next election.
Labour have already infuriated pensioners by the WFA cut, hence most of those pensioners who did vote Labour in July have now gone Tory, Reform or LD
The polling doesn't support that claim.
Yes it does, hence Labour's poll collapse since July
Someone said Labour had a 6% lead. Really?
On just 29% ie Brown 2010 levels and only because the Tories were on 23% and 22% for Reform ie 45% for the right combined, even bigger than the 43% for Boris in 2019.
That was the BEST poll for Labour this month, others had them tied with the Tories
Methinks the lady doth protest too much!
On what grounds? Starmer's government is the most unpopular newly elected government in the UK since polling records began.
Most polls have it already losing its majority and even the Opinium you champion has Labour scraping home with the loss of nearly 100 Labour MPs
Well according to Electoral Calculus it gives Labour a 54 seat majority. After the disastrous start by the "most unpopular newly elected government since records began" I expect Starmer may be sitting by his pool sipping a glass of Sangria with a quiet sense of satisfaction and possibly even a smile on his face.
All of the above results for Labour would be worse than the 91 seats Brown lost in 2010 and the 60 seats Corbyn lost in 2019 and the 60 seats Foot lost in 1983.
So nothing at all for Sir Keir to smile about. Indeed if we had PR on the Techne and FindOutNow polls we would be heading for a Tory and Reform governmet
But...we'd still end up with a Labour government with an embarrassingly humongous majority wouldn't we?
If contractors want the same employment rights as staff, they could try paying the same taxes as staff.
And not claiming their commute as a business expense.
Not sure what prompted that rant...but UK contractor scene Outside IR35 - ltd company. no employment rights,, can only claim travel to temporary, not main, work site. Control over pay, dividends and pension payments. Inside ir35 - no employment rights, money has to go through unregulated umbrella company (best situation just incompetent not actively defrauding you) no control over pay or pension but full liability for any tax nonpayment issues. This is quite literally having your money paid to someone like Doug Barrowman to take his cut, relying on them to make tax deductions and pay them to HMRC, then pay you. Fixed term contract - basically staff, some employee benefits but not full employment rights. Probably staff rate.
1 and 3 are OK. 2 is a totally fucked up situation that just created a bigger space for a redundant middle-party to take a cut. Typical Fucking Tories.
Abolish NI the IR35 issue goes away.
Considering NI is a tax paid to the state it should have absolutely nothing to do with "employment rights" which are paid by the employer, not the state.
Don't disagree but politically impossible I'd say. The wealthy with mainly investment income would whip up the pensioner vote in outrage, JSP would have to be taken out by a sniper to save the nation's hearing.
80% of pensioners didn't vote Labour at the last election. If it were up to pensioners alone we'd have a landslide Tory government.
Labour shouldn't be kowtowing to the grey vote. If they do, they deserve to lose the next election.
Labour have already infuriated pensioners by the WFA cut, hence most of those pensioners who did vote Labour in July have now gone Tory, Reform or LD
The polling doesn't support that claim.
Yes it does, hence Labour's poll collapse since July
Someone said Labour had a 6% lead. Really?
On just 29% ie Brown 2010 levels and only because the Tories were on 23% and 22% for Reform ie 45% for the right combined, even bigger than the 43% for Boris in 2019.
That was the BEST poll for Labour this month, others had them tied with the Tories
Methinks the lady doth protest too much!
On what grounds? Starmer's government is the most unpopular newly elected government in the UK since polling records began.
Most polls have it already losing its majority and even the Opinium you champion has Labour scraping home with the loss of nearly 100 Labour MPs
Well according to Electoral Calculus it gives Labour a 54 seat majority. After the disastrous start by the "most unpopular newly elected government since records began" I expect Starmer may be sitting by his pool sipping a glass of Sangria with a quiet sense of satisfaction and possibly even a smile on his face.
All of the above results for Labour would be worse than the 91 seats Brown lost in 2010 and the 60 seats Corbyn lost in 2019 and the 60 seats Foot lost in 1983.
So nothing at all for Sir Keir to smile about. Indeed if we had PR on the Techne and FindOutNow polls we would be heading for a Tory and Reform governmet
But...we'd still end up with a Labour government with an embarrassingly humongous majority wouldn't we?
No, on most of the polls I just gave you Labour would lose its majority and it would be a hung parliament. Even Opinium has a smaller Labour majority than even Blair got in 2005
If contractors want the same employment rights as staff, they could try paying the same taxes as staff.
And not claiming their commute as a business expense.
Not sure what prompted that rant...but UK contractor scene Outside IR35 - ltd company. no employment rights,, can only claim travel to temporary, not main, work site. Control over pay, dividends and pension payments. Inside ir35 - no employment rights, money has to go through unregulated umbrella company (best situation just incompetent not actively defrauding you) no control over pay or pension but full liability for any tax nonpayment issues. This is quite literally having your money paid to someone like Doug Barrowman to take his cut, relying on them to make tax deductions and pay them to HMRC, then pay you. Fixed term contract - basically staff, some employee benefits but not full employment rights. Probably staff rate.
1 and 3 are OK. 2 is a totally fucked up situation that just created a bigger space for a redundant middle-party to take a cut. Typical Fucking Tories.
Abolish NI the IR35 issue goes away.
Considering NI is a tax paid to the state it should have absolutely nothing to do with "employment rights" which are paid by the employer, not the state.
Don't disagree but politically impossible I'd say. The wealthy with mainly investment income would whip up the pensioner vote in outrage, JSP would have to be taken out by a sniper to save the nation's hearing.
80% of pensioners didn't vote Labour at the last election. If it were up to pensioners alone we'd have a landslide Tory government.
Labour shouldn't be kowtowing to the grey vote. If they do, they deserve to lose the next election.
Labour have already infuriated pensioners by the WFA cut, hence most of those pensioners who did vote Labour in July have now gone Tory, Reform or LD
Precisely, so what do they have to lose?
Double down and tackle all the grey shibboleths at once. Merge Income Tax and NI so pensioners aren't on a lower rate of tax than working people. Deal with planning and the green belt so young people can get houses.
Just deal with everything that long should have been done but couldn't be done by the last government that was reliant on the grey vote in a way that Labour is not.
Rayner has already announced plans to concrete over much of the greenbelt.
Labour is now polling 25-29% and is the most unpopular new government since records began, hitting farmers, pensioners, small businesses etc.
But we're right at the start of the election cycle. The idea is to have a solid and rapidly improving economy by around spring 2027. The last thing you want to do is peak too early. History is littered with examples of what happens when someone or something peaks too early.
Well that "solid and rapidly improving economy by around spring 2027" was the idea...
They'll be lucky to hit it by 2029.
We'll see. And remember this, the further it goes down the stronger it will pop up when it emerges. Like the rubber duck in a bath. I guess we all have one of those?
Unless they go down the plug hole.
I don't see the uptick as inevitable.
Well to switch to serious, which I probably shouldn't on Christmas Eve, but here goes since it's a non-standard boutique view I have on this "growth" business:
It's unrealistic to expect good growth over the next few years (solid and sustainable as opposed to manufactured froth) and imo they shouldn't have promised it. It won't be their fault if the economy remains sluggish (actually a par score) but of course if that does happen they'll pay a price politically.
This is fair enough because they'd seek to take credit if things somehow surprise on the upside, again mainly because of the macro factors improving, randomness and luck being the key players when it comes to the economy over the short term, far outweighing the impact of specific domestic policies.
This is why, on the politics, the absolutely crucial thing is to make the "14 years of Tory rot" charge stick (as the Cons did with "fixing Labour's mess"). Because that, if successful, will mitigate the political price for low growth and give them a good chance of a 2nd term.
You can't actually believe this garbage. If the Tories managed to rot the economy, clearly they had agency, so how is it the case that Sir Zero Plan has no agency now?
I'm not trying to have it both ways. I don't think the Tories did 'rot' the economy. They did badly on growth (and Brexit is especially worth a mention here as an anti-growth policy) but as always global factors dominated. If you look at UK economic performance over time the biggest contributory factor is world economic performance. UK governments do have an important impact on UK growth but it's on the margins compared to global factors and it doesn't happen within electoral cycles (unless it's of the frothy unsustainable variety).
So why has Dubai managed to sustain growth despite these global factors? Or rainier and closer to home, Ireland?
Mid East oil state and EU tax haven respectively. Both much smaller than us. Our realistic target is to perform in line with (and preferably a little better than) most of our peers. I'd like to see that in party manifestos.
Then for me (with Labour) the focus to be on a more equal distribution of income, wealth and opportunity. There's too much banging on about the size of the pie (where government impact is important but very limited) and too little about how it's sliced (where they can actually do loads).
If you look at our English speaking peers in America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand we've not kept up with them for the past 30 years.
If it had the pie would be considerably bigger and that is where governments can act, if they have the will to do so.
Again, I note, much higher immigration.
Nothing wrong with skilled immigration, especially if there's few restrictions on construction so migrants and young people can get a house.
The problem in this country is we have the worst of both worlds. Draconian planning restrictions mean that housing can't keep up with demand, and much of the migration that has come has been so firms can have minimum wage people to work with rather than skilled migrants.
Nah.
We are short of housing because the state wants it that way.
The state likes it that way because political parties are bankrolled by developers.
There are 1.5 million unbuilt extant planning permissions. Sometimes the land banks accrue value faster than building the houses.
I’m on a planning committee and I can’t stop planning going through in the places I don’t want it. Places without sewers, or schools, or doctors surgeries; no shops, bus services, green space, cycle routes, street lighting, pavements. Etc, etc.
Blaming the planning process makes you a useful idiot owned by the capitalist running dogs.
You wanna do something useful? Give me the power to charge council tax on unbuilt houses.
The striking thing about this is that this is almost entirely self-inflicted. That's two self-inflicted major negative economic shocks, Truss and the Black Hole of Labour, to go along with the two major international economic shocks of the pandemic and the Russo-Ukraine War, in about five years.
The striking thing about this is that this is almost entirely self-inflicted. That's two self-inflicted major negative economic shocks, Truss and the Black Hole of Labour, to go along with the two major international economic shocks of the pandemic and the Russo-Ukraine War, in about five years.
It's a desperately bad situation.
Plus the GRC, which we never really recovered from), plus that Brexit thing. We have been reeling from pillar to post for the past 20 years and nobody except possibly Boris ever got to grips with it.
I'm sure they're all having fun, but it's hard to see where the money is in UK rolling news. Or even why shadowy billionaires are bankrolling it.
Meanwhile, if it doesn't make the 8am bulletin on Mike and Snoo (Your Morning Crew), does it really matter? People tracking the daily ebb and flow are a weird minority.
The striking thing about this is that this is almost entirely self-inflicted. That's two self-inflicted major negative economic shocks, Truss and the Black Hole of Labour, to go along with the two major international economic shocks of the pandemic and the Russo-Ukraine War, in about five years.
It's a desperately bad situation.
Plus the GRC, which we never really recovered from), plus that Brexit thing. We have been reeling from pillar to post for the past 20 years and nobody except possibly Boris ever got to grips with it.
There was eight years between the banking collapse and the Brexit vote, and about five years after that until Brexit actually happened at the end of the transition period, so the density of economic shocks was about normal until the period since the pandemic started.
Comments
The latter is just part for the course.
Happy Christmas, everyone.
Novara Media's reporter interviewing Ashfield's potential Green Voter:
https://youtu.be/eQB_IpQY3-8?t=1262
My wife had a favourite mug that referenced her home country which she broke. So I replaced it for Christmas.
Took me ages to find - ultimately it was from a quirky supplier on Amazon marketplace.
All the credit that I got for my efforts was reset to zero when I said I got it from Amazon…
I don't understand how that could have happened, but we will rectify that mistake tomorrow
I have also managed to dodge the get-together with far too many in-laws on Boxing Day.
So for an antisocial bugger such as myself, all should be good.
Here is then-Vice President George Bush showing how it is done:-
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Pg2BaM9xSKA
Now that might mean lower NHS costs by more in work but that is unlikely to fund it all
Prosecco Socialist.
2. Tories then changed the stop selling date to 2035. That is not them being banned in 2035
3. You would dance on a pinhead, spouting nonsensical sophistry if you thought there was a vote in it. There isn’t.
Compare and contrast Reform - telling bullshit straight up - with the Tories - selling sophistry and lies. No wonder they ate your party.
https://x.com/MediaGuido/status/1871212212880130183?t=CsTNt179VodiuBaGDiblMg&s=19
I'm off to watch Die Hard whilst it's still in season.
Plus NI of 12p in the pound over £1048, and Income Tax of 20p in the pound over £1048.
You're offered another 10 hours per month.
So going from £1146.20 per month to earning £1250.40 per month would see the amount of money you receive per month increasing by £13.55.
Your income tax would be £20.84 on those extra earnings, your NI would be £12.50, and your UC would be reduced by £57.31.
Those ten extra hours would be worth £1.36 per hour. You'd keep 13% of your extra earnings.
If the top rate of tax was 87%, do you think that might have an effect on the highest earners and the amount of work they do?
Of course we could also slash the welfare state US style so you get no UC and no benefits at all after 6 months of unemployment and cannot claim unemployment benefits again unless sufficient insurance contributions made while working if you really want to deal with the taper problem.
The welfare savings could also then be used to cut income taxes for the lower paid, then extra hours worked really would boost your income and not working at all for more than 6 months sends you to the foodbank
NEW THREAD
At the moment though Labour, the Tories and Reform are all in the 20-30% range and under FPTP that means the main gain in seats would be for the Tories from Labour
We are short of housing because the state wants it that way.
The state likes it that way because political parties are bankrolled by developers.
There are 1.5 million unbuilt extant planning permissions. Sometimes the land banks accrue value faster than building the houses.
I’m on a planning committee and I can’t stop planning going through in the places I don’t want it. Places without sewers, or schools, or doctors surgeries; no shops, bus services, green space, cycle routes, street lighting, pavements. Etc, etc.
Blaming the planning process makes you a useful idiot owned by the capitalist running dogs.
You wanna do something useful? Give me the power to charge council tax on unbuilt houses.
Then we would see movement.
It's a desperately bad situation.
Meanwhile, if it doesn't make the 8am bulletin on Mike and Snoo (Your Morning Crew), does it really matter? People tracking the daily ebb and flow are a weird minority.
And so, fellow weirdoes, Happy Christmas.