This is my photo for the day, which follows on from our conversation about hybrid insulin pumps and Type I Diabetes yesterday. I thought PBers might be interested what it is and how it works. This is mine, which is a Freestyle Libre sensor, and Omnipod 5 insulin pump.
The 25mm diameter disk is a later version of the continuous glucose testing device (about every 3 minutes) you may remember Theresa May wearing on her upper arm when she was in Government after 2013. It costs the NHS £37.50 and lasts 15 days ie 24-25 per annum if none fail, and if one does the manufacturer replaces.
The other one is an insulin pump, which I prime with insulin and then stick on, which last 2.5-3 days (ie for me 35-40 per quarter). It is called an Omnipod 5 - I do not know how much that costs. This is called a patch pump. When you set it up it fires a tiny cannula into your subcutaneous fat, and dispenses insulin in 0.05u doses to make up an automatic or requested dose. This manufacturer also replace failures. There are other systems where pumps are not disposable, which tend to sit in a pouch like a pager, and have a connection set and PTFE cannula.
Both are stuck on, and are shower, swimming pool etc proof. The glue works well for me - if I lose one I have normally knocked it on a doorpost, though there is a smallish (maybe 5%) failure rate for me overall, which is very occasionally with the setup process or comms failure.
They talk via bluetooth, and then the pump talks to the handheld controller, which is a not-latest model locked down smartphone. That displays all sorts of graphs, is used for a dose each meal bases on the contents of the meal, and has a data card in it which communicates with an online portal - with even more options. My diabetic specialist nurse can see the portal.
Cost wise, it has all been through NICE and is cost-benefit viable as well as a lifestyle benefit. It continually adjusts the basal (ie run your body) insulin to maintain a target blood glucose level, and I have to put in a dose based on carb-in-the-food basically whenever I eat something. @Foxy may know the costs for the Pump.
This is really part of the shift to prevention. Diabetes takes up about 10% of the NHS budget, and ~9% of that goes on consequences and complications, not basic management.
As an example of costs, poorly managed diabetes rather than well-managed diabetes increases heart attack risk by about 3-4x, and similarly for eyesight problems, nerve damage problems, foot problems, potentially weight problems, mental health problems, and possibly umpteen other things. And these can become a descending spiral, as each makes all other others more difficult. Altogether and averaged, those cost a lot more. Easier ways of managing T1D helps with all of those.
Something where the NHS is world-leading. If anyone has any questions, I'll try to answer, in between other stuff today.
It’s said that the fire department budget was cut, and that they didn’t have the resources to carry out preventive works in the areas now on fire.
The latest fires are in Hollywood Hills, an area of mostly large houses and a lot of trees. Not somewhere you’d usually build given the fire risk, but this is some of the most expensive property in the city.
Also stories of insurance companies cancelling fire cover because of the lack of action from the city to stop the fires every year. The suggestion is that they were prevented from raising prices sufficiently to cover the risk, so they stopped fire cover completely.
I think that the proposed budget cuts to the fire department didn't go ahead, they were negotiated away.
It would help if rich Libertarian landlords actually paid their property taxes to fund the fire department of course. There's always a tweet:
Doesn’t LA have some of the highest property and income takes in the whole country?
The least you’d expect is a municipality and fire service that can manage the forest, given that there’s going to be fires there every year. The suggestion is that they’ve not been clearing the scrub from the forest floor, not maintaining fire breaks (although they may be of limited use in the high winds) and not maintaining water reservoirs for fire hydrants.
I suspect that there will be quite the political fallout once the immediate emergency has been dealt with, with various elected officials trying to deflect the blame onto each other. I suspect that a lot of those living in Hollywood Hills especially, are people with a public profile who can make a lot of noise. It’s a popular area with entertainment types as one might expect.
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
Indeed, it would be weak-minded and infantile to put people like Musk and Putin on a pedestal. BTW, have you come out for the AfD yet, like your heroes?
Such fun
Nobody in Germany wants to deal with the heirs to Hitler but everyone is good on deals with the heirs to Stalin
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
Indeed, it would be weak-minded and infantile to put people like Musk and Putin on a pedestal. BTW, have you come out for the AfD yet, like your heroes?
Such fun
Nobody in Germany wants to deal with the heirs to Hitler but everyone is good on deals with the heirs to Stalin
Who murdered more people
Umm it's the AfD who want to do a deal with Putin...
I think we are being a little parochial about this. Gilt rates are rising sharply across the western world, not just in the UK. We are far from being the only western country that is both overborrowed and overborrowing.
The increase in borrowing costs is being largely driven by international factors. There is the serious and increasing risk of a financial collapse in Russia. China remains mired in a sea of property related debts reducing demand. The US has chosen to elect a nutter who seems serious about implementing dangerous policies as the Fed commented yesterday. None of this is Reeves' fault.
What is her fault is the failure to control government spending in the budget with her tax increases being insufficient to cover these, making a bad deficit worse. Her hopium that this was somehow, magically, going to lead to growth has so far fallen flat which makes repairing the damage done even more difficult. The Spring budget was supposed to be a non event on the basis that stability required only 1 major budget event a year rather than the 2 we had slipped into. I don't think it will be like that. I think she will be pressed into a wide range of cuts to keep her financial targets given that the £10bn leeway she had has already been wiped out by the increase in borrowing costs. If she seems unpopular now, imagine how she will be looked at after that. The risk to Reeves is not now but in the summer.
Though pointing out that the economic or financial situation is worse elsewhere rarely helps with electoral popularity. History shows that time and time again.
The Telegraph helpfully includes a graph showing gilt yields did spike under Truss but then returned to that level after Labour's July 2023 election win.
Even the most die-hard Reform-Tory anti Labourite skinhead Thatcherite?
It’s quite astonishing how astonishingly shit they have been at absolutely everything, from day 1, and without any let-up, and it gets even worse from week to week
To be fair, apart from Hunt who was relatively competent (NI cuts aside), are they any worse than the last lot ?
Can individuals take Court action under it? ie Could an individual take a website to Court?
Or is it purely a matter where the police would investigate and then only the CPS could take action? (I appreciate in this situation an individual could make a complaint to the police which could kick-off the process, but the individual couldn't initiate Court action).
If it's the latter, how about adding an extra question to this year's quiz, ie:
Number of prosecutions under the OSA in 2025.
Given all the comments on here in recent days it would be interesting to get everyone's predictions recorded and to then go back and see how accurate they were in a year's time.
There is, IIRC, no restriction as to what laws a private prosecution can cover. @PBLawyers?
Certainly in Scotland, and I believe in England, you need the permission of the prosecuting authority or the court to proceed with a private prosecution.
But I think this misrepresents the risk. Large swathes of conduct has now been defined as wrongful. That means, if someone claims to have been damaged by it they can ask the courts to stop it. The risk to PB and its ilk is not prosecution but injunctions or interdict (as we call it in Scotland) along with damages. Previously there was a grey area as to whether or not the site was responsible for individual posts as long as it took reasonable care to monitor them. That grey are has largely disappeared now (subject to the yet unpublished guidance).
It’s hardly sunshine and roses over here with the country in recession and unemployment rising. The National-led coalition was elected in October 2023 and has its own Rachel Reeves in the form of Nicola Willis.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who makes Starmer look charismatic, has offered the tired old schtick of tax cuts for the wealthy and big public spending cuts including getting rid of civil servants - not on the 50-90% levels much beloved of @MaxPB and @Leon but still considerable.
As per most “centre right” Governments, however, Luxon is bogged down by ephemeral issues such as the Treaty Principles Bill which is an attempt by the junior partner in the Government, ACT, to redefine the Waitangi Treaty of 1840 by which the indigenous Māori accepted the sovereignty of Queen Victoria in exchange for guarantees. It’s as big and contentious an issue here as EU membership was in the UK and as divisive.
As @DavidL rightly says, the party is over. The fundamental question facing stagnating economies is how can growth be restarted and prosperity return? With the uncertainties of the Ukraine conflict and the return of Donald Trump, it’s understandable the mood music isn’t good. No one on any part of the political spectrum has so far come back with anything remotely plausible or coherent. The Trump team may think tariffs are the answer - perhaps in the short term for some parts of America but the rest of the world may not agree.
The notion there is a pot of gold at the end of the spending cut rainbow has always been one for the fantasists. Indeed, at a time of ageing populations and calls for increases in health and defense spending, the only option to this observer is to raise taxes substantially - personal rates to 25p basic rate and 50p higher rate but restore the link between thresholds and inflation (perhaps a little above inflation). These rates would still be well below tax rates in the 70s but would enable some order to be restored to the public finances.
Other taxes would also have to rise - the meal has been enjoyed, the bill has been presented and we all have to pay for what we’ve “enjoyed”.
Even the most die-hard Reform-Tory anti Labourite skinhead Thatcherite?
It’s quite astonishing how astonishingly shit they have been at absolutely everything, from day 1, and without any let-up, and it gets even worse from week to week
To be fair, apart from Hunt who was relatively competent (NI cuts aside), are they any worse than the last lot ?
I know that is poor mitigation but all the same.
When the shit hit the fan in 2022, the Tories ousted Liz in short order. Labour won't do the same to the current clowns running the show.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
And we are bobbing around in an ocean near a two tonne whale with delirium tremens. The belated realisation of what Trumponomics looks like presumably being the global driver of this.
As for the local stuff, Sunak and Hunt left a sugar rush boomlet, horrible public finances and a "and we woke up and it was all a dream" plan to fix it. People who left a pile of poo under every cushion don't get to complain that the room is a bit whiffy.
We are potentially approaching a full blown economic crisis. Government borrowing is now the priciest it has been this century and the pound is plunging
The economic fundamentals of the UK are dismal. And the chancellor exhibits no idea of having any clue what to do - no plan no nothing - no brains - except witter on about “growth” while making things WORSE
Thoughts and prayers with the people who actually voted for this.
Well I did and I have Buyers remorse and have said that for a while.
I bought the "govt in waiting" line and I bought the Reeves schtick of engaging with business, focussing on growth etc etc.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
Yet your party thinks we should give £10 Billion to entitled middle class Boomers who couldn't be bothered to check their retirement dates !!!!!
Who pays for that ?
The generation who won't get a state pension, or will work til their seventies at least to get it.
I don’t believe it. Eg no one could have predicted freebiegate. No one predicted they would have zero plans in place. No one predicted they would talk down the economy for six months then deliver the worst budget in the universe. No one predicted the incredible Chagos blunder. No one predicted their big idea for the NHS would be “a commission to look at things in 2028”
I fully accept you were wise to warn me they’d be shit. But I doubt you thought they’d be THIS shit
Nah, I did. Look at my posts from June and early July.
I expected it on both the domestic and foreign front, and that's what we've got.
I even mocked those who said they HAD A PLAN.
Yes. There were those of us that pointed out the Labour Plan was entirely limited to "DON'T DROP THE F**KING MING VASE!!"
If Starmer's Labour had had a single bright idea on how to do running the economy better, we might have just heard mention in the previous 2 or 3 years. Instead, we have a bunch of no marks thinking "well, how difficult can it be to be better than the Tories?"
Starmer and Reeves are both technocrats; that is, they think there is an objectively right answer to every question, including how to run the economy, and that either the Conservatives wilfully or the Civil Service complacently messed things up. That is why they swept into office with no policies and no plans other than to ask the Civil Service for all their good ideas that the Tories had blocked, whether on how to grow the economy, which taxes to raise, even what each department has been knowingly squandering money on.
It’s said that the fire department budget was cut, and that they didn’t have the resources to carry out preventive works in the areas now on fire.
The latest fires are in Hollywood Hills, an area of mostly large houses and a lot of trees. Not somewhere you’d usually build given the fire risk, but this is some of the most expensive property in the city.
Also stories of insurance companies cancelling fire cover because of the lack of action from the city to stop the fires every year. The suggestion is that they were prevented from raising prices sufficiently to cover the risk, so they stopped fire cover completely.
I think that the proposed budget cuts to the fire department didn't go ahead, they were negotiated away.
It would help if rich Libertarian landlords actually paid their property taxes to fund the fire department of course. There's always a tweet:
Doesn’t LA have some of the highest property and income takes in the whole country?
The least you’d expect is a municipality and fire service that can manage the forest, given that there’s going to be fires there every year. The suggestion is that they’ve not been clearing the scrub from the forest floor, not maintaining fire breaks (although they may be of limited use in the high winds) and not maintaining water reservoirs for fire hydrants.
I suspect that there will be quite the political fallout once the immediate emergency has been dealt with, with various elected officials trying to deflect the blame onto each other. I suspect that a lot of those living in Hollywood Hills especially, are people with a public profile who can make a lot of noise. It’s a popular area with entertainment types as one might expect.
It’s said that the fire department budget was cut, and that they didn’t have the resources to carry out preventive works in the areas now on fire.
The latest fires are in Hollywood Hills, an area of mostly large houses and a lot of trees. Not somewhere you’d usually build given the fire risk, but this is some of the most expensive property in the city.
Also stories of insurance companies cancelling fire cover because of the lack of action from the city to stop the fires every year. The suggestion is that they were prevented from raising prices sufficiently to cover the risk, so they stopped fire cover completely.
I think that the proposed budget cuts to the fire department didn't go ahead, they were negotiated away.
It would help if rich Libertarian landlords actually paid their property taxes to fund the fire department of course. There's always a tweet:
Doesn’t LA have some of the highest property and income takes in the whole country?
The least you’d expect is a municipality and fire service that can manage the forest, given that there’s going to be fires there every year. The suggestion is that they’ve not been clearing the scrub from the forest floor, not maintaining fire breaks (although they may be of limited use in the high winds) and not maintaining water reservoirs for fire hydrants.
I suspect that there will be quite the political fallout once the immediate emergency has been dealt with, with various elected officials trying to deflect the blame onto each other. I suspect that a lot of those living in Hollywood Hills especially, are people with a public profile who can make a lot of noise. It’s a popular area with entertainment types as one might expect.
Perhaps the libertarian landlord should have employed some private foresters to rake his local forest floor.
We are seeing how private greed destroys the public good. Climate change is the tragedy of the Commons on a global scale.
People who have lived in a particular way all their lives don't believe stuff like this will happen to them, until it does.
Similarly the wine country further north in California. Many of the smaller towns were right in the middle of pine woods because that's the way it always was. There are (or were) 19th century wooden built houses there. Then the fires in 2017 and 2018 burned thousands of homes to the ground.
Thanks to all the noise about the subject that shall not be named, the rolling back of Blair's academies by Phillipson seems to have gone almost unnoticed.
Even the most die-hard Reform-Tory anti Labourite skinhead Thatcherite?
It’s quite astonishing how astonishingly shit they have been at absolutely everything, from day 1, and without any let-up, and it gets even worse from week to week
Can individuals take Court action under it? ie Could an individual take a website to Court?
Or is it purely a matter where the police would investigate and then only the CPS could take action? (I appreciate in this situation an individual could make a complaint to the police which could kick-off the process, but the individual couldn't initiate Court action).
If it's the latter, how about adding an extra question to this year's quiz, ie:
Number of prosecutions under the OSA in 2025.
Given all the comments on here in recent days it would be interesting to get everyone's predictions recorded and to then go back and see how accurate they were in a year's time.
There is, IIRC, no restriction as to what laws a private prosecution can cover. @PBLawyers?
Certainly in Scotland, and I believe in England, you need the permission of the prosecuting authority or the court to proceed with a private prosecution.
But I think this misrepresents the risk. Large swathes of conduct has now been defined as wrongful. That means, if someone claims to have been damaged by it they can ask the courts to stop it. The risk to PB and its ilk is not prosecution but injunctions or interdict (as we call it in Scotland) along with damages. Previously there was a grey area as to whether or not the site was responsible for individual posts as long as it took reasonable care to monitor them. That grey are has largely disappeared now (subject to the yet unpublished guidance).
In England, as I understand it, the CPS can take over and stop a prosecution, but they don't have to give permission for it to start??
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
Thanks to all the noise about the subject that shall not be named, the rolling back of Blair's academies by Phillipson seems to have gone almost unnoticed.
Seems a backward step.
This is what happens when you have a cabinet made up of working class people with chips on their shoulders.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
Thanks to all the noise about the subject that shall not be named, the rolling back of Blair's academies by Phillipson seems to have gone almost unnoticed.
The Telegraph helpfully includes a graph showing gilt yields did spike under Truss but then returned to that level after Labour's July 2023 election win.
But @bondegezou was denying any chance of a debt crisis yesterday? Surely the commissar knows and sees all and can't be wrong about these things. It must be the money markets that are wrong and they just need to get their act together.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
The more broke we are, the more virtuous it makes us to give money away. It’s like Cameron ringfencing international aid in 2010.
Thanks to all the noise about the subject that shall not be named, the rolling back of Blair's academies by Phillipson seems to have gone almost unnoticed.
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
Hunt is part of the problem. He shouldn’t get credit for trying to engineer an election bounce that proved unsustainable. The idea that things were good before July 4 is absurd.
But @bondegezou was denying any chance of a debt crisis yesterday? Surely the commissar knows and sees all and can't be wrong about these things. It must be the money markets that are wrong and they just need to get their act together.
Yes exactly. What we really need to do now is focus on closing down the wet markets
Truss sends lawyer's letter to Starmer about the crashing of the economy under her leadership.
Labour HQ: Yippee!!!! And we were having such a shit couple of weeks!!
Risk, though, is that the public remember the Conservatives sharpened their knives and ended her premiership.
Will Labour do the same? Unlikely.
The electorate might contrast that prompt action and burgeoning economic recovery with Labour sticking with failure and inflicting it on the country for years.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
That being true, why they fuck are we giving Mauritius £9bn?
That's a very good question, which has not been answered. Kemi might have done much better to lead on that at PMQs.
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
Hunt is part of the problem. He shouldn’t get credit for trying to engineer an election bounce that proved unsustainable. The idea that things were good before July 4 is absurd.
You can argue whether they were 'good' or not. But I suspect the vast majority preferred the economic picture before the election rather than the one afterwards.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
My wife has found a house she likes in Lugano, we're going to view it in early February. It may be that we leave for Switzerland by the end of 2025.
The Telegraph helpfully includes a graph showing gilt yields did spike under Truss but then returned to that level after Labour's July 2023 election win.
Hold on, July 2023...?
It was the direction of travel that spooked everyone, not the rate itself. That's why Reeves has largely got away with it so far - the budget didn't alter the general trend in the same way.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Morning. I don’t see Reeves going myself. The calibre of replacements isn’t there. Yvette Cooper would be a good choice as she’s a far more experienced political player but you then have an issue of who to replace her with as well as the fact that the tabloids would probably reheat their misogynistic tendencies and suggest that she was a marionette controlled Gepetto like by her husband.
Someone up thread hit on the nub of matters when they said that we have had two recent governments with good majorities that are all at sea. I think that speaks to a deep malaise about politics, in the past governments could rely on a support system of true believers allied with a mass of benefit of the doubt supporters. The former group included those who had similarities to the latter in that they might not get all their ideological wish list implemented but would still support their side by and large, the latter group were your traditional floating voter. I think the advent of rolling news with more rapid news cycles plus the bombarding nature of social media with if not ‘fake news’ certainly highly curated news has fragmented the true believers and eradicated any kind of benefit of the doubt. Sadly I can’t see how you reestablish those conditions upon which good government really depends.
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
Indeed, it would be weak-minded and infantile to put people like Musk and Putin on a pedestal. BTW, have you come out for the AfD yet, like your heroes?
Such fun
Nobody in Germany wants to deal with the heirs to Hitler but everyone is good on deals with the heirs to Stalin
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
Indeed, it would be weak-minded and infantile to put people like Musk and Putin on a pedestal. BTW, have you come out for the AfD yet, like your heroes?
Such fun
Nobody in Germany wants to deal with the heirs to Hitler but everyone is good on deals with the heirs to Stalin
Who murdered more people
Umm it's the AfD who want to do a deal with Putin...
Thanks to all the noise about the subject that shall not be named, the rolling back of Blair's academies by Phillipson seems to have gone almost unnoticed.
Seems a backward step.
This is what happens when you have a cabinet made up of working class people with chips on their shoulders.
I think they've asked Miliband to stop eating his chip buttys in cabinet meetings now. It was the ones sprayed into hair that particularly rankled.
Thanks to all the noise about the subject that shall not be named, the rolling back of Blair's academies by Phillipson seems to have gone almost unnoticed.
Seems a backward step.
This is what happens when you have a cabinet made up of working class people with chips on their shoulders.
Phillipson went to a Catholic voluntary aided school which became a academy says Mr Wiki.
Is that a source of chip?
Or perhaps it is just teaching unions putting pressure on?
Labour are lucky that Truss exposed the LDI issue for them. Imagine if that only came to light now and they were faced with a market panic on top of everything else.
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
Hunt is part of the problem. He shouldn’t get credit for trying to engineer an election bounce that proved unsustainable. The idea that things were good before July 4 is absurd.
You can argue whether they were 'good' or not. But I suspect the vast majority preferred the economic picture before the election rather than the one afterwards.
It was fake and unsustainable. If you like denial maybe you prefer living like that for a few weeks.
The fundamentals of the U.K. economy have been difficult since Brexit and arguably the GFC. No one has solved it.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
The country is not broke. The people are not broke. I live near Glasgow Airport and every day thousands of people are flying on foreign holidays and business trips. The A380 double decker jumbo flies daily to Dubai. The Guardian's food critic recommends £50 lunches and £100 dinners. The average house is worth £300K. This a wealthy country, but the wealth is not being shared around.
I think we are being a little parochial about this. Gilt rates are rising sharply across the western world, not just in the UK. We are far from being the only western country that is both overborrowed and overborrowing.
The increase in borrowing costs is being largely driven by international factors. There is the serious and increasing risk of a financial collapse in Russia. China remains mired in a sea of property related debts reducing demand. The US has chosen to elect a nutter who seems serious about implementing dangerous policies as the Fed commented yesterday. None of this is Reeves' fault.
What is her fault is the failure to control government spending in the budget with her tax increases being insufficient to cover these, making a bad deficit worse. Her hopium that this was somehow, magically, going to lead to growth has so far fallen flat which makes repairing the damage done even more difficult. The Spring budget was supposed to be a non event on the basis that stability required only 1 major budget event a year rather than the 2 we had slipped into. I don't think it will be like that. I think she will be pressed into a wide range of cuts to keep her financial targets given that the £10bn leeway she had has already been wiped out by the increase in borrowing costs. If she seems unpopular now, imagine how she will be looked at after that. The risk to Reeves is not now but in the summer.
The answer is dead easy then. A joint western decision to default on all Chinese owned debt followed by bullying our financial institutions to ignore it.
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
Hunt is part of the problem. He shouldn’t get credit for trying to engineer an election bounce that proved unsustainable. The idea that things were good before July 4 is absurd.
You can argue whether they were 'good' or not. But I suspect the vast majority preferred the economic picture before the election rather than the one afterwards.
It was fake and unsustainable. If you like denial maybe you prefer living like that for a few weeks.
The fundamentals of the U.K. economy have been difficult since Brexit and arguably the GFC. No one has solved it.
Since the financial crisis things have been difficult. There was recovery from it, then the pandemic plus food inflation courtesy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Labour's approach of announcing tax rises but not saying what they are, stalling confidence and investment, then hammering National Insurance while tossing billions to their public sector allies and a few more to Mauritius for some bloody reason has not necessarily reinforced confidence in their economic credentials.
None of you would be saying this had he backed Harris and the Dems.
Don't deny it, we won't believe you.
Musk proved himself to be an utter berk even before he started going political, remember when he got the hump with divers rejecting his submarine for that cave rescue in Thailand?
Even if Musk never said a single political thing he's made a ridiculous number of stupid comments and made claims he hasn't kept.
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
When? If Hunt had become leader instead of Rishi then Hunt would not have been Chancellor so would not have created what became known as a black hole by making unfunded tax or NI cuts, or unfunded spending commitments. If Hunt became leader instead of Boris, then he'd not have slung the moderates out, which has got the party where it is now.
Or if you mean instead of Kemi, well, Labour tried pointing out George Osborne flatlined the recovery he'd inherited. It didn't work then because people were not listening. It would be the same now. Ask Kemi whose every PMQ runs into the Tory record.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
And we are bobbing around in an ocean near a two tonne whale with delirium tremens. The belated realisation of what Trumponomics looks like presumably being the global driver of this.
As for the local stuff, Sunak and Hunt left a sugar rush boomlet, horrible public finances and a "and we woke up and it was all a dream" plan to fix it. People who left a pile of poo under every cushion don't get to complain that the room is a bit whiffy.
I don't think people have got the slightest idea yet of what the effect of Trump's global tariff policies are going to be.
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
When? If Hunt had become leader instead of Rishi then Hunt would not have been Chancellor so would not have created what became known as a black hole by making unfunded tax or NI cuts, or unfunded spending commitments. If Hunt became leader instead of Boris, then he'd not have slung the moderates out, which has got the party where it is now.
Or if you mean instead of Kemi, well, Labour tried pointing out George Osborne flatlined the recovery he'd inherited. It didn't work then because people were not listening. It would be the same now. Ask Kemi whose every PMQ runs into the Tory record.
To clarify, I meant Hunt instead of Badenoch.
Although I wish he'd been picked instead of Boris Johnson.
Morning. I don’t see Reeves going myself. The calibre of replacements isn’t there. Yvette Cooper would be a good choice as she’s a far more experienced political player but you then have an issue of who to replace her with as well as the fact that the tabloids would probably reheat their misogynistic tendencies and suggest that she was a marionette controlled Gepetto like by her husband.
Someone up thread hit on the nub of matters when they said that we have had two recent governments with good majorities that are all at sea. I think that speaks to a deep malaise about politics, in the past governments could rely on a support system of true believers allied with a mass of benefit of the doubt supporters. The former group included those who had similarities to the latter in that they might not get all their ideological wish list implemented but would still support their side by and large, the latter group were your traditional floating voter. I think the advent of rolling news with more rapid news cycles plus the bombarding nature of social media with if not ‘fake news’ certainly highly curated news has fragmented the true believers and eradicated any kind of benefit of the doubt. Sadly I can’t see how you reestablish those conditions upon which good government really depends.
The problem is not that. It is not having a plan, and not understanding how to implement it.
If you try and govern by pulling levers and expect things to happen - well, they won't.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
Hunt is part of the problem. He shouldn’t get credit for trying to engineer an election bounce that proved unsustainable. The idea that things were good before July 4 is absurd.
You can argue whether they were 'good' or not. But I suspect the vast majority preferred the economic picture before the election rather than the one afterwards.
It was fake and unsustainable. If you like denial maybe you prefer living like that for a few weeks.
The fundamentals of the U.K. economy have been difficult since Brexit and arguably the GFC. No one has solved it.
Since the financial crisis things have been difficult. There was recovery from it, then the pandemic plus food inflation courtesy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Labour's approach of announcing tax rises but not saying what they are, stalling confidence and investment, then hammering National Insurance while tossing billions to their public sector allies and a few more to Mauritius for some bloody reason has not necessarily reinforced confidence in their economic credentials.
It wasn’t recovery it was pumping a bit of money into the economy to win votes. A few shots of tequila to end the evening. This is the hangover.
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
Indeed, it would be weak-minded and infantile to put people like Musk and Putin on a pedestal. BTW, have you come out for the AfD yet, like your heroes?
Such fun
Nobody in Germany wants to deal with the heirs to Hitler but everyone is good on deals with the heirs to Stalin
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
Indeed, it would be weak-minded and infantile to put people like Musk and Putin on a pedestal. BTW, have you come out for the AfD yet, like your heroes?
Such fun
Nobody in Germany wants to deal with the heirs to Hitler but everyone is good on deals with the heirs to Stalin
Who murdered more people
Umm it's the AfD who want to do a deal with Putin...
Thanks to all the noise about the subject that shall not be named, the rolling back of Blair's academies by Phillipson seems to have gone almost unnoticed.
None of you would be saying this had he backed Harris and the Dems.
Don't deny it, we won't believe you.
Musk proved himself to be an utter berk even before he started going political, remember when he got the hump with divers rejecting his submarine for that cave rescue in Thailand?
Even if Musk never said a single political thing he's made a ridiculous number of stupid comments and made claims he hasn't kept.
And yet he is the greatest engineering-capitalist of the 21st century. X is just a place for him to blow off steam tbh, unfettered by our milquetoast OSA and libel laws.
I note stocks down, bonds up, sterling down (Even against the €). Not going too well for Reeves.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
But the trouble is, higher and higher taxes means more and more rich people leaving and less and less economic activity. And then the poor stupid people left vote for more welfare we can’t afford. We are in a doom loop. We are New York in the 1970s - but with our the Fed to bail us out
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
Dire economic background at the moment. Looking at the stock market we've had three retailers (Greggs, M&S, and Tesco) announce pretty reasonable updates this morning - all down (9%, 5%, 2%). These aren't normal times.
(I don't blame Reeves for this - she's just doing her best to deliver on Labour policy. And of course their policy is hardly a mad rush left, so although wrong-headed it's only moderately so. It's much more the state the country has drifted into over many years - since 1997 really)
The country is broke, people are broke. It’s not really a surprise. And instead of focusing on how we can turn the economy around we’re focused on lies about things that have already happened and absurdity about wanting to be dictated to by a foreigner.
And we are bobbing around in an ocean near a two tonne whale with delirium tremens. The belated realisation of what Trumponomics looks like presumably being the global driver of this.
As for the local stuff, Sunak and Hunt left a sugar rush boomlet, horrible public finances and a "and we woke up and it was all a dream" plan to fix it. People who left a pile of poo under every cushion don't get to complain that the room is a bit whiffy.
I don't think people have got the slightest idea yet of what the effect of Trump's global tariff policies are going to be.
I'm not sure Trump does either. My theory is this is typical bluster/negotiating points.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
Meta is about to provide test cases for the OSB before PB does, I suspect.
..Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to how it moderates content that will roll out in the coming months, including doing away with professional fact checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful conduct policy, adding new types of content users can post on the platform, effective immediately. Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to "women as household objects or property" or "transgender or non-binary people as 'it," according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow "allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality."..
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
Incentive matter. 20,000 millionaires have left since COVID.
Some people say if they want to go let them. But then who pays the taxes they pay ?
That's the issue.
This is not new either. You cannot blame Reeves for this although arguably she has made it worse.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
It’s said that the fire department budget was cut, and that they didn’t have the resources to carry out preventive works in the areas now on fire.
The latest fires are in Hollywood Hills, an area of mostly large houses and a lot of trees. Not somewhere you’d usually build given the fire risk, but this is some of the most expensive property in the city.
Also stories of insurance companies cancelling fire cover because of the lack of action from the city to stop the fires every year. The suggestion is that they were prevented from raising prices sufficiently to cover the risk, so they stopped fire cover completely.
I think that the proposed budget cuts to the fire department didn't go ahead, they were negotiated away.
It would help if rich Libertarian landlords actually paid their property taxes to fund the fire department of course. There's always a tweet:
Doesn’t LA have some of the highest property and income takes in the whole country?
The least you’d expect is a municipality and fire service that can manage the forest, given that there’s going to be fires there every year. The suggestion is that they’ve not been clearing the scrub from the forest floor, not maintaining fire breaks (although they may be of limited use in the high winds) and not maintaining water reservoirs for fire hydrants.
I suspect that there will be quite the political fallout once the immediate emergency has been dealt with, with various elected officials trying to deflect the blame onto each other. I suspect that a lot of those living in Hollywood Hills especially, are people with a public profile who can make a lot of noise. It’s a popular area with entertainment types as one might expect.
Which all costs money.If you don't pay enough tax, you don't get the services.
The problems in LA aren’t from a lack of money, the City, County, and State governments all have plenty of money.
The problems are the politicians and the allocation of that money, funding pet projects and woke/DEI stuff and not the basics that the residents expect, like a fire service and forestry management.
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
I do actually view Musk as a loser. He had it all and has chosen to live his life angry, deranged and detatched from reality. That is worse than living a normal life, however successful.
This is hilarious.
It's the apostasy, isn't it?
None of you would be saying this had he backed Harris and the Dems.
Don't deny it, we won't believe you.
If he had said he wants to overthrow the UK PM, and that was Boris or Farage, yes absolutely I would have a go. I value democracy and we are losing it, quickly, to the oligarchs.
Ed Davey was very good with this at PMQs. He is very good at constructive opposition.
We can't let British democracy turn into a plaything for overseas billionaires with short attention spans.
At PMQs, I urged the Prime Minister to work with us to make sure power always sits with the voters, not wealthy foreign oligarchs.
The words are easy, not sure how it works in practice though. Social media, AI, globalisation, extreme wealth inequality all in favour of the oligarchs and demographics and migration handicapping the democrats.
I can't see a plausible path for democracy to survive against the autocrats.
The problem for the oligarchs is they want low taxes for themselves and lots of skilled migrants and cheap labour and the voters want high taxes for them, low taxes for themselves and slashed immigration
If you take the long view, we’re probably due a traditional recession to clear out some inefficient businesses and reset things. A lot of sticking plasters have been in place for a long time.
Big benefits in a few years. It will just be crap for those of us living through it.
I wouldn’t want to be the politicians to have to manage the first one post-furlough precedent mind.
What Leon is obviously hoping for is an economic event sufficient to force the U.K. back into the EEA.
Getting rid of the Brexit bureaucracy has got to be worth a few percent on gdp.
This is right, our nation has taken advantage of (And even gone further than) precisely zero of the potential benefits of leaving the EU in areas such as regulation so we might as well chuck our lot back in with the real benefits of closer integration with a market of half a billion odd.
What Leon is obviously hoping for is an economic event sufficient to force the U.K. back into the EEA.
Getting rid of the Brexit bureaucracy has got to be worth a few percent on gdp.
Nope, we wave goodbye to our hugely growing AI industry if we join the single market. It's more valuable than any minor gains on the other side. We've also just begun divergence on gene editing which means our biotech industry will have a 3-5 year boom, again outweighing any reduction in friction for traditional industries.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
But the reality is that healthcare demand is fixed, criminal justice has to be fixed, and we need to strengthen our defences.
Morning. I don’t see Reeves going myself. The calibre of replacements isn’t there. Yvette Cooper would be a good choice as she’s a far more experienced political player but you then have an issue of who to replace her with as well as the fact that the tabloids would probably reheat their misogynistic tendencies and suggest that she was a marionette controlled Gepetto like by her husband.
Someone up thread hit on the nub of matters when they said that we have had two recent governments with good majorities that are all at sea. I think that speaks to a deep malaise about politics, in the past governments could rely on a support system of true believers allied with a mass of benefit of the doubt supporters. The former group included those who had similarities to the latter in that they might not get all their ideological wish list implemented but would still support their side by and large, the latter group were your traditional floating voter. I think the advent of rolling news with more rapid news cycles plus the bombarding nature of social media with if not ‘fake news’ certainly highly curated news has fragmented the true believers and eradicated any kind of benefit of the doubt. Sadly I can’t see how you reestablish those conditions upon which good government really depends.
The problem is not that. It is not having a plan, and not understanding how to implement it.
If you try and govern by pulling levers and expect things to happen - well, they won't.
I don’t think that helps, of course. If politics is getting more ideologically shrill, dare I say unhinged, then adopting a posture that attracts limited ideological flak is attractive. It certainly has short term benefits as Starmer and Labour reaped in July. The problem is that ultimately it deepens the problem, fewer people willing to give their acquiescence and a ratcheting up of the ideological temperature.
What Leon is obviously hoping for is an economic event sufficient to force the U.K. back into the EEA.
Getting rid of the Brexit bureaucracy has got to be worth a few percent on gdp.
This is right, our nation has taken advantage of (And even gone further than) precisely zero of the potential benefits of leaving the EU in areas such as regulation so we might as well chuck our lot back in with the real benefits of closer integration with a market of half a billion odd.
Not true, AI is worth more to this country than anything we might gain from reducing export friction for traditional industries and the growth potential is substantially higher. It alone is a Brexit advantage worth having Brexit, the UK is the only European country currently benefiting from the boom in AI products with literally billions of investment pouring into the country from VCs and big companies who want to take advantage of our talent base.
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
Hunt is part of the problem. He shouldn’t get credit for trying to engineer an election bounce that proved unsustainable. The idea that things were good before July 4 is absurd.
You can argue whether they were 'good' or not. But I suspect the vast majority preferred the economic picture before the election rather than the one afterwards.
It was fake and unsustainable. If you like denial maybe you prefer living like that for a few weeks.
The fundamentals of the U.K. economy have been difficult since Brexit and arguably the GFC. No one has solved it.
Since the financial crisis things have been difficult. There was recovery from it, then the pandemic plus food inflation courtesy of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Labour's approach of announcing tax rises but not saying what they are, stalling confidence and investment, then hammering National Insurance while tossing billions to their public sector allies and a few more to Mauritius for some bloody reason has not necessarily reinforced confidence in their economic credentials.
It wasn’t recovery it was pumping a bit of money into the economy to win votes. A few shots of tequila to end the evening. This is the hangover.
The national insurance reductions were funded by changing the non-doms tax status.
The change that Labour claimed for 14 years would raise endless billions.
What Leon is obviously hoping for is an economic event sufficient to force the U.K. back into the EEA.
Getting rid of the Brexit bureaucracy has got to be worth a few percent on gdp.
Nope, we wave goodbye to our hugely growing AI industry if we join the single market. It's more valuable than any minor gains on the other side. We've also just begun divergence on gene editing which means our biotech industry will have a 3-5 year boom, again outweighing any reduction in friction for traditional industries.
Lots of talk on TwiX now about the millionaires and non Doms fleeing the UK. At a time of great impoverishment the Labour government has contrived to frighten away the most important part of our tax base, and told them btw private schools will be slowly abolished via taxes
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
As always 'More or Less' is your friend. When you were spouting this awhile ago More or Less debunked it. Who to believe, some nutters on twitter or people who analyse the data properly. It appears the definition of millionaire and sample selection were, how can we put it, bollocks.
Are you seriously disputing that rich people are leaving the UK? Every metric shows they are and in number
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Nope I'm not. Just pointing out that last time you did this by quoting a survey you saw somewhere it turned out to be complete bollocks. I know you think you are always right, but you seem to have a very short memory and a very poor source of your data.
If it helps I can give you personal experience instead of surveys - over the pre Christmas drinks party rounds I met (and I noted the number for work reasons) 22 couples who have already or are in the process of moving here from the UK as an absolute direct result of Labour winning the election last year.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
But the reality is that healthcare demand is fixed, criminal justice has to be fixed, and we need to strengthen our defences.
It’s an impossible puzzle to fix.
At some point, though, the markets will demand a fix, in a manner that can't be ignored. See Greece.
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
But the reality is that healthcare demand is fixed, criminal justice has to be fixed, and we need to strengthen our defences.
It’s an impossible puzzle to fix.
I think there's scope for big efficiency savings in some areas whilst others truly are down to the bone. The problem is those areas with plenty of fat still to cut aren't going to admit to it; so the only way it's ever going to get done is with something like the Musk/Ramaswamy/Millei approach of a vigorous external actor(s) coming in an saying we don't need this, this, this and this.
I read in the FT that Muskybaby has a team of advisors working on ways to remove Starmer…
Morning all.
Welcome to the script of Goldfinger, except with the villain as a child-man 1990's Wayne,'s World character.
Lex Luther. Narcisisst mad scientist genius turned power obsessed CEO turned super villain.
Shouldn't that be Lex Loser?
Yes, because whenever I look at the richest man in the world and possibly the most powerful private citizen on the planet and one the greatest engineers and inventors of this or any time, I always think “loser”, which is very different to how I feel when I look at semi retired provincial quacks from Leicester
Indeed, it would be weak-minded and infantile to put people like Musk and Putin on a pedestal. BTW, have you come out for the AfD yet, like your heroes?
Such fun
Nobody in Germany wants to deal with the heirs to Hitler but everyone is good on deals with the heirs to Stalin
Who murdered more people
As far as I see it Merz and Scholz would rather deal with each other than the AfD or heirs to Stalin
I can't see any alternative Labour Chancellor doing much different so I expect her to stay. Given the need to cut borrowing that means either further higher taxes or spending cuts and the Labour Party base and unions would revolt unless it was the former
They can revolt as much as they want, but this is the reality and drastic cuts in spending and increase taxes is her only path, otherwise the IMF are waiting in the wings
More taxes are going to throttle economic growth, the reality is she needs to cut spending.
But the reality is that healthcare demand is fixed, criminal justice has to be fixed, and we need to strengthen our defences.
It’s an impossible puzzle to fix.
I think there's scope for big efficiency savings in some areas whilst others truly are down to the bone. The problem is those areas with plenty of fat still to cut aren't going to admit to it; so the only way it's ever going to get done is with something like the Musk/Ramaswamy/Millei approach of a vigorous external actor(s) coming in an saying we don't need this, this, this and this.
Our national budget is basically healthcare, welfare, police, schools, transport and defence. The rest is noise. And, frankly, it’s telly just health and welfare. Hard to find deep and meaningful cuts.
Comments
The 25mm diameter disk is a later version of the continuous glucose testing device (about every 3 minutes) you may remember Theresa May wearing on her upper arm when she was in Government after 2013. It costs the NHS £37.50 and lasts 15 days ie 24-25 per annum if none fail, and if one does the manufacturer replaces.
The other one is an insulin pump, which I prime with insulin and then stick on, which last 2.5-3 days (ie for me 35-40 per quarter). It is called an Omnipod 5 - I do not know how much that costs. This is called a patch pump. When you set it up it fires a tiny cannula into your subcutaneous fat, and dispenses insulin in 0.05u doses to make up an automatic or requested dose. This manufacturer also replace failures. There are other systems where pumps are not disposable, which tend to sit in a pouch like a pager, and have a connection set and PTFE cannula.
Both are stuck on, and are shower, swimming pool etc proof. The glue works well for me - if I lose one I have normally knocked it on a doorpost, though there is a smallish (maybe 5%) failure rate for me overall, which is very occasionally with the setup process or comms failure.
They talk via bluetooth, and then the pump talks to the handheld controller, which is a not-latest model locked down smartphone. That displays all sorts of graphs, is used for a dose each meal bases on the contents of the meal, and has a data card in it which communicates with an online portal - with even more options. My diabetic specialist nurse can see the portal.
Cost wise, it has all been through NICE and is cost-benefit viable as well as a lifestyle benefit. It continually adjusts the basal (ie run your body) insulin to maintain a target blood glucose level, and I have to put in a dose based on carb-in-the-food basically whenever I eat something. @Foxy may know the costs for the Pump.
This is really part of the shift to prevention. Diabetes takes up about 10% of the NHS budget, and ~9% of that goes on consequences and complications, not basic management.
As an example of costs, poorly managed diabetes rather than well-managed diabetes increases heart attack risk by about 3-4x, and similarly for eyesight problems, nerve damage problems, foot problems, potentially weight problems, mental health problems, and possibly umpteen other things. And these can become a descending spiral, as each makes all other others more difficult. Altogether and averaged, those cost a lot more. Easier ways of managing T1D helps with all of those.
Something where the NHS is world-leading. If anyone has any questions, I'll try to answer, in between other stuff today.
We are seeing how private greed destroys the public good. Climate change is the tragedy of the Commons on a global scale.
Hold on, July 2023...?
I know that is poor mitigation but all the same.
But I think this misrepresents the risk. Large swathes of conduct has now been defined as wrongful. That means, if someone claims to have been damaged by it they can ask the courts to stop it. The risk to PB and its ilk is not prosecution but injunctions or interdict (as we call it in Scotland) along with damages. Previously there was a grey area as to whether or not the site was responsible for individual posts as long as it took reasonable care to monitor them. That grey are has largely disappeared now (subject to the yet unpublished guidance).
It’s hardly sunshine and roses over here with the country in recession and unemployment rising. The National-led coalition was elected in October 2023 and has its own Rachel Reeves in the form of Nicola Willis.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who makes Starmer look charismatic, has offered the tired old schtick of tax cuts for the wealthy and big public spending cuts including getting rid of civil servants - not on the 50-90% levels much beloved of @MaxPB and @Leon but still considerable.
As per most “centre right” Governments, however, Luxon is bogged down by ephemeral issues such as the Treaty Principles Bill which is an attempt by the junior partner in the Government, ACT, to redefine the Waitangi Treaty of 1840 by which the indigenous Māori accepted the sovereignty of Queen Victoria in exchange for guarantees. It’s as big and contentious an issue here as EU membership was in the UK and as divisive.
As @DavidL rightly says, the party is over. The fundamental question facing stagnating economies is how can growth be restarted and prosperity return? With the uncertainties of the Ukraine conflict and the return of Donald Trump, it’s understandable the mood music isn’t good. No one on any part of the political spectrum has so far come back with anything remotely plausible or coherent. The Trump team may think tariffs are the answer - perhaps in the short term for some parts of America but the rest of the world may not agree.
The notion there is a pot of gold at the end of the spending cut rainbow has always been one for the fantasists. Indeed, at a time of ageing populations and calls for increases in health and defense spending, the only option to this observer is to raise taxes substantially - personal rates to 25p basic rate and 50p higher rate but restore the link between thresholds and inflation (perhaps a little above inflation). These rates would still be well below tax rates in the 70s but would enable some order to be restored to the public finances.
Other taxes would also have to rise - the meal has been enjoyed, the bill has been presented and we all have to pay for what we’ve “enjoyed”.
Source: https://x.com/leannespurs/status/1877233917033357412
As for the local stuff, Sunak and Hunt left a sugar rush boomlet, horrible public finances and a "and we woke up and it was all a dream" plan to fix it. People who left a pile of poo under every cushion don't get to complain that the room is a bit whiffy.
I bought the "govt in waiting" line and I bought the Reeves schtick of engaging with business, focussing on growth etc etc.
Mugged off isn't even the start of it.
Who pays for that ?
The generation who won't get a state pension, or will work til their seventies at least to get it.
Britain’s bond turmoil invokes memory of the 1976 debt crisis, former Bank of England rate-setter Martin Weale tells @PhilAldrick @greg_ritchie
He warns Labour may have to resort to austerity measures if sentiment doesn’t change
He warns Labour may have to resort to austerity measures if sentiment doesn’t change”
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1877269909563969783?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Similarly the wine country further north in California. Many of the smaller towns were right in the middle of pine woods because that's the way it always was. There are (or were) 19th century wooden built houses there.
Then the fires in 2017 and 2018 burned thousands of homes to the ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUhZQEzHw3E
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-01-08/debates/86D0BABA-D93E-457A-8ABA-82E39C24715A/TrialOfLucyLetby
Seems a backward step.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions
If Hunt had stood for and become leader, the Conservatives would be in prime position to contrast their economic recovery (early days though it was) with Labour bludgeoning the economy with a tax hammer.
It’s all adding up. All these allegedly small things are adding up to a looming and desperate collision with reality. Even as we allow in millions of migrants who will be a net drain on the treasury, house thousands of asylum seekers in the savoy at billions a year, and pay Tanzania forty trillion quid to take control of Cornwall
It’s coming. A crash
Brace
Labour HQ: Yippee!!!! And we were having such a shit couple of weeks!!
Will Labour do the same? Unlikely.
The electorate might contrast that prompt action and burgeoning economic recovery with Labour sticking with failure and inflicting it on the country for years.
Kemi might have done much better to lead on that at PMQs.
Someone up thread hit on the nub of matters when they said that we have had two recent governments with good majorities that are all at sea. I think that speaks to a deep malaise about politics, in the past governments could rely on a support system of true believers allied with a mass of benefit of the doubt supporters. The former group included those who had similarities to the latter in that they might not get all their ideological wish list implemented but would still support their side by and large, the latter group were your traditional floating voter. I think the advent of rolling news with more rapid news cycles plus the bombarding nature of social media with if not ‘fake news’ certainly highly curated news has fragmented the true believers and eradicated any kind of benefit of the doubt. Sadly I can’t see how you reestablish those conditions upon which good government really depends.
Is that a source of chip?
Or perhaps it is just teaching unions putting pressure on?
The fundamentals of the U.K. economy have been difficult since Brexit and arguably the GFC. No one has solved it.
I live near Glasgow Airport and every day thousands of people are flying on foreign holidays and business trips.
The A380 double decker jumbo flies daily to Dubai.
The Guardian's food critic recommends £50 lunches and £100 dinners.
The average house is worth £300K.
This a wealthy country, but the wealth is not being shared around.
Labour's approach of announcing tax rises but not saying what they are, stalling confidence and investment, then hammering National Insurance while tossing billions to their public sector allies and a few more to Mauritius for some bloody reason has not necessarily reinforced confidence in their economic credentials.
Even if Musk never said a single political thing he's made a ridiculous number of stupid comments and made claims he hasn't kept.
Or if you mean instead of Kemi, well, Labour tried pointing out George Osborne flatlined the recovery he'd inherited. It didn't work then because people were not listening. It would be the same now. Ask Kemi whose every PMQ runs into the Tory record.
COUTTS LONDON PRIME PROPERTY INDEX Q3 2024: PRICES DROP AND BUYERS GET BIGGER DISCOUNTS
Our latest research on luxury London property shows prices falling, average discounts close to 9% and almost 80% of sales coming in below asking price.
Although I wish he'd been picked instead of Boris Johnson.
If you try and govern by pulling levers and expect things to happen - well, they won't.
*Very old reference to Brian Blessed and Z Cars.
I note stocks down, bonds up, sterling down (Even against the €). Not going too well for Reeves.
our the Fed to bail us out
That was a bad mistake, and it looks like Reeves might bring some of it back
..Meta on Tuesday announced sweeping changes to how it moderates content that will roll out in the coming months, including doing away with professional fact checking. But the company also quietly updated its hateful conduct policy, adding new types of content users can post on the platform, effective immediately. Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to "women as household objects or property" or "transgender or non-binary people as 'it," according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow "allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation,
given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality."..
Getting rid of the Brexit bureaucracy has got to be worth a few percent on gdp.
Some people say if they want to go let them. But then who pays the taxes they pay ?
That's the issue.
This is not new either. You cannot blame Reeves for this although arguably she has made it worse.
Asda driver just phoned to say he is stuck in the snow and cannot tell us when we will receive our delivery due this morning
Some of it makes good economic sense; some doesn't.
And FFS, reform the electricity market.
And ditch CCS.
The problems are the politicians and the allocation of that money, funding pet projects and woke/DEI stuff and not the basics that the residents expect, like a fire service and forestry management.
Big benefits in a few years. It will just be crap for those of us living through it.
I wouldn’t want to be the politicians to have to manage the first one post-furlough precedent mind.
It’s an impossible puzzle to fix.
But...
Net Support (for ban) Among:
18-29: -16%
30-44: +15%
45-64: +36%
65+: +48%
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1877117500288020495
The change that Labour claimed for 14 years would raise endless billions.
All of these people, all 22 couples were people who had set up successful businesses - not inherited money. They are selling or have sold their UK properties, stopped paying staff, stopped buying luxury goods and cars in the UK. Will not be setting up new business or employing people in the UK for the foreseeable future, not paying any more taxes to the UK.
This is one small place - just think how many are going to larger places such as Switzerland, Dubai etc.
I’m sure there will be people who say “good riddance” but remember the new car they bought each year covered an essential salary from the VAT. The shops they shopped in need fewer staff with fewer customers. Their gardeners and housekeepers will find fewer hours to work.
I’ve said it before - I do not rejoice in this, it’s not necessarily good for where I live but it’s worse for the UK which I love.
So ideologically sticking it to the rich will prove to be a stupid act of self harm.
See Greece.