Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 4m MAIL ON SUNDAY: Musk and Cummings ‘in plot to sabotage UK politics’ #TomorrowsPapersToday
Makes sense. Also explains Elon's swipe at Nigel, whom Dom loathes.
'The sources say that Mr Cummings, who has called for huge cuts to the size of the British state, is advising Mr Musk on his mission to slash trillions of dollars from US government spending on behalf of incoming President Donald Trump. Labour’s suspicions Mr Musk and Mr Cummings were in cahoots were aroused by the tech tycoon’s use of British terminology such as ‘two-tier Keir’ and the timings of his posts.
Many were put out in the middle of the night in America – coinciding with daytime in the UK – leading the sources to conclude Mr Musk ‘must have a UK-based co-conspirator writing the posts for him’.An ally of Mr Musk said: ‘It is 100 per cent true that they [Musk and Cummings] are talking about smaller government and the end of the traditional party system.
Silicon Valley figures seem to have the constancy of a wet digestive, which I suppose makes sense in a move fast and break things kind of attitude, but it does mean it cannot be predicted what they might be in future. Political headwinds explain much of their shifting attitudes for now.
Although the top billionaire owners I imagine will remain a bit more constant, since their goals of amassing power and influence for themselves is a bit more traditional than the generic attitudes of the industry area as a whole, and their actions more focused as a result.
Two interesting legal developments today relating to our civil service and its understanding - or, rather, misunderstanding of equality law. In one case 2 Ministerial Departments have had to pay out a whistleblowers claim in full (a substantial six-figure sum), agree to rewrite their internal equality policies and return to a policy of impartiality. It's a pretty comprehensive defeat - by agreement - not even after a court ruling after a few years of trying to fight the case.
Who the hell took the decision to fight: lawyers? HR? The Head of the Civil Service? Ministers? (The last seems unlikely to me.) A colossal waste of time and money. And pretty appalling that 2 Departments have to admit publicly that they have not been impartial in relation to their obligations to their employees and their understanding of the relevant law, as well as not understanding how wrong it is to retaliate against whistleblowers, as they did. There is also (no surprise to me) 2 conflicts of interest at the heart of the case.
In it he extols the virtues of Eastern Europe (narrator: technically it's Central Europe) and about how it is advancing, and even overtaking, Western Europe in culinary and other fields. Some of you may recall me pointing this out in military matters in my article on the Intermarium two years ago. You can find it here: https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/01/29/the-intermarium/
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
If it’s just us, and not other European countries that need such drastic treatment, we would need to look at the reasons why. Destroying manufacturing, austerity, selling the family silver. Perhaps then, people would see the damage that Thatcher, Brown and Osborne inflicted on us.
It ultimately comes down to a desire to live beyond means.
Its something governments are happy to pander to but the desire is too deeply intrinsic among too many people.
There’s actually tons of manufacturing. It’s just not the “half naked men pouring molten steel” type stuff.
The belief that there is no manufacturing is widespread in politics, though.
Mind you, if you tell people that manufacturing was only 32% of the economy in 1970, they don’t believe you….
In South Wales in 1994 I had the following biggest manufacturing customer. This is not exhaustive. British Steel Ebbw Vale, Port Talbot ( mothballed) Tredegar, Llanwern and Trostre ( still open) Hoover, Linde Fork Trucks, Sony X2, Hitachi, Panasonicx3, Aiwa, Dia Plastics, Ninkaplast, senior Flexonics, Lucas Varity x2, Borg Warner, Orion Television, Coopers Filters, Fram Filters, Ford Bridgend, Ford Swansea, Bosch Alternators, Signode, Allied Signal, Ate, Allied Steel and Wire X2 ( still operating as Celsa) BMW Bargoed, Remploy, Biomet, TRW (still going) INA Bearings, Nippon Electrical Glass, The London Rubber Company ( Durex) Llanelli Radiators ( now Maretti Marelli) Dewhursts ( clothing) Triumph ( hosiery) Burberry, Thyssen Krupp ( now Gestampt) L'Oréal, Revlon, Ely Bridge Paper mill, British Tissues ( still open but called something else) Alcan, Metal Box, Vale Pontardawe ( still going) TAP, Lyte Ladders ( still going) Addis, Spontex, Smiths Industries, Fiskars, Molynx (Mole Grips) Royal Mint ( going strong) I could go on all night. Unless otherwise specified all now gone. There are still some medium sized manufacturers still going that I haven't mentioned and even some decent sized start ups ( including Aston Martin in St A than. But you will never make up the lost manufacturing jobs and export revenue with small start up enterprises.
It's a shame, although we do have more large retail parks than ever before and the burgeoning number of burger flipping premises has seen a remarkable growth.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
Instead of creating a national endowment fund, the UK funds pensions from current contributions. The demographic change of a large increase in pensioners agaist a shrinking woekgorce now means that there are not enough current contributions to be able to fund current pension payments. As with all Ponzi schemes , sooner or later the system goes bust. That time is now upon us.
See former Labour MP Ivor Caplin has been arrested today. Will let you search out why.
Note that he was suspended by Labour in the summer, don't think this is related though.
Not sure how he ever got into the whips office or became a minister.
Both the sting and the arrest were live streamed on Facebook, I hear.
I *really* don't like that. It's as bad - worse, perhaps - as the BBC helicopter shots of the police's raid on Cliff Richard's house. Assuming it was a police arrest?
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
But we won't all start the same, because for most people, inheritances come later in life.
We have tried to give our son a good start in life: I give him extra coaching in maths, Mrs J coaches him in English, and we try to further interests he develops. Hopefully he is getting a good start in life.
One of his friends has a single mother, who, to put it mildly, is struggling, and he often misses school.
Our son has advantages that other lad does not have. How do you level-up (or down...) so they 'start life the same' ?
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
Good morning, everyone.
The notion the state should confiscate all your possessions upon death is certainly insane.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
Good morning, everyone.
The notion the state should confiscate all your possessions upon death is certainly insane.
I suppose it speaks volumes when people are prepared to spend an icy January evening at Sandown Park but interesting to read how Reform activists seem to be sticking with Farage.
It was also interesting to see the positive comments for Rupert Lowe as a possible post-Farage leader given he is seven years older than Farage. Lowe seems to be the archetypal businessman turned politician and we hear the old schtick about we need more business people in politics.
The problem is business people are used to command and control - they cajole or coerce. In politics that doesn’t work even if you are primus inter pares - you still need to argue and persuade colleagues and history shows even the greatest leaders often have their biggest enemies behind them rather than in front of them.
Reform seem a messy coalition held together by Farage and immigration. Beyond that, I struggle to see much cohesive but you could probably the same of the other broad coalitions we call parties. How it will evolve in the next 2-3 years will be fundamental to much of British politics.
I suppose it speaks volumes when people are prepared to spend an icy January evening at Sandown Park but interesting to read how Reform activists seem to be sticking with Farage.
It was also interesting to see the positive comments for Rupert Lowe as a possible post-Farage leader given he is seven years older than Farage. Lowe seems to be the archetypal businessman turned politician and we hear the old schtick about we need more business people in politics.
The problem is business people are used to command and control - they cajole or coerce. In politics that doesn’t work even if you are primus inter pares - you still need to argue and persuade colleagues and history shows even the greatest leaders often have their biggest enemies behind them rather than in front of them.
Reform seem a messy coalition held together by Farage and immigration. Beyond that, I struggle to see much cohesive but you could probably the same of the other broad coalitions we call parties. How it will evolve in the next 2-3 years will be fundamental to much of British politics.
If he turns out to be half as useless as the most famous businessman in politics right now, he'd make Liz Truss look like William Pitt the Younger.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
The Sunday Hardman comes out more promptly than the usual but absent Rawnsley; this week’s has been carefully edited to focus on the actual subject of why public inquiries don’t get actioned, to respect site rules:
There was an irony to Yvette Cooper rushing to the Commons last Monday and…[telling] MPs that what was important was ensuring that change actually happened, “rather than just thinking, ‘well, an announcement has been made’, but nothing changes and nothing is actually done”.
She was right, and that confusion between announcement and action is very common in Westminster, with leaders often thinking they’ve addressed an issue merely because they’ve given a speech about it, and the media often enabling that by not pursuing the action on the issue sufficiently. But Cooper herself was being moved by the raging tides of political debate to make an announcement, rather than having made it a few weeks before Christmas. After all, IICSA reported in 2022 and, while the Conservatives did very little other than welcome its recommendations, Labour could also have announced it was implementing them in the months between coming to power in July and this week, when there was enough media interest in the matter.
… the general course of action when a public inquiry finally reports is for ministers to give statements about the mistakes of the past and then to say they will be considering the recommendations seriously, before doing nothing at all to implement them. But there is no mechanism for parliament to follow up whether a public inquiry is being implemented by ministers. They may be asked about it in an ad hoc way at a select committee hearing, or on the floor of the House of Commons, but at no point is there a deadline to meet or a response to pen that would detail the progress of a government in ensuring that something is a “never again”.
What Westminster really needs to examine is whether it has the wherewithal to respond to that inquiry and make “never again” have meaning. And it definitely doesn’t need an inquiry into that question: we already have ample examples to show that the answer is no.
Explanatory: Her Guardian column is worth reading in full. As well as referring to the forbidden topic, it brings in the Iraq inquiry, Shipman, Essex mental health deaths, and Mid Staffs, to make a general case that the real issue is that while an inquiry is underway, it’s a reason for waiting rather than doing, and once an inquiry is published, everyone loses interest.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
The Sunday Hardman comes out more promptly than the usual but absent Rawnsley; this week’s has been carefully edited to focus on the actual subject of why public inquiries don’t get actioned, to respect site rules:
There was an irony to Yvette Cooper rushing to the Commons last Monday and…[telling] MPs that what was important was ensuring that change actually happened, “rather than just thinking, ‘well, an announcement has been made’, but nothing changes and nothing is actually done”.
She was right, and that confusion between announcement and action is very common in Westminster, with leaders often thinking they’ve addressed an issue merely because they’ve given a speech about it, and the media often enabling that by not pursuing the action on the issue sufficiently. But Cooper herself was being moved by the raging tides of political debate to make an announcement, rather than having made it a few weeks before Christmas. After all, IICSA reported in 2022 and, while the Conservatives did very little other than welcome its recommendations, Labour could also have announced it was implementing them in the months between coming to power in July and this week, when there was enough media interest in the matter.
… the general course of action when a public inquiry finally reports is for ministers to give statements about the mistakes of the past and then to say they will be considering the recommendations seriously, before doing nothing at all to implement them. But there is no mechanism for parliament to follow up whether a public inquiry is being implemented by ministers. They may be asked about it in an ad hoc way at a select committee hearing, or on the floor of the House of Commons, but at no point is there a deadline to meet or a response to pen that would detail the progress of a government in ensuring that something is a “never again”.
What Westminster really needs to examine is whether it has the wherewithal to respond to that inquiry and make “never again” have meaning. And it definitely doesn’t need an inquiry into that question: we already have ample examples to show that the answer is no.
Explanatory: Her Guardian column is worth reading in full. As well as referring to the forbidden topic, it brings in the Iraq inquiry, Shipman, Essex mental health deaths, and Mid Staffs, to make a general case that the real issue is that while an inquiry is underway, it’s a reason for waiting rather than doing, and once an inquiry is published, everyone loses interest.
Well exactly. Public inquiries have one function, and that's to avoid the need for action. More specifically, whichever minister has called one will have done it to bury a problem that is too difficult, in the hope that they will have moved on and it will be someone else's job to deal with it by the time the issue is exhumed.
This Government has already started doing that by proposing a years long inquiry into social care reform, which has no other function than to prevent Streeting from having to order a costly expansion of provision and demand the money off Reeves. In this aspect at least, the current administration is no different to any of its predecessors.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
I have sometimes thought that inheritance tax should be abolished, and inheritances treated as income. Indeed I would ignore all entreaties of the wealthy and tax all income the same.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
I have sometimes thought that inheritance tax should be abolished, and inheritances treated as income. Indeed I would ignore all entreaties of the wealthy and tax all income the same.
What is income is a perennial question. Let us suppose that all income is taxed - which would be good. And inheritance - which is a capital matter in principle - is treated as income. Good.
Suppose that on 5th April 2024 your wholly owned house is worth £350,000, and 12 months later it is worth £370,000. Should that £20,000 be regarded as income (even though you have not sold it) and taxed at your IT rate?
Actually I think it would be overall good for the economy if it were.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
Instead of creating a national endowment fund, the UK funds pensions from current contributions. The demographic change of a large increase in pensioners agaist a shrinking woekgorce now means that there are not enough current contributions to be able to fund current pension payments. As with all Ponzi schemes , sooner or later the system goes bust. That time is now upon us.
Also worth pointing out that NICs (of all forms, I think - there is a bizarre dearth of information online) were substantially lower in the past.
If you are going to make this direct link between the State Pension and contributions, it implies that the State Pension will become much, much larger in the future. Which, as you point out above, is impossible.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
If a house decreases in value, or a car (which is also an asset) do you think the state should give money to the owner to make up for the shortfall?
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
As a newbie to PB, I am working under the assumption that any political philosophy expounded is there for comment. But on the subject of inherited wealth, the current government may actually be very lucky. There is a lot of wealth built up within the boomer generation which will be passed down with relative levels of tax deducted. Future IHT and CGT income could transform government finances if only more of the current boomer cadre were to pass away. Perhaps a 2025 flu pandemic might do it.
I am sure its entirely coincidental that lawyers in November each year have a 'free will writing' a few months before a lot of these wills become live. Surely they are not that cynical.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2024)
"Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities."
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
I have sometimes thought that inheritance tax should be abolished, and inheritances treated as income. Indeed I would ignore all entreaties of the wealthy and tax all income the same.
What is income is a perennial question. Let us suppose that all income is taxed - which would be good. And inheritance - which is a capital matter in principle - is treated as income. Good.
Suppose that on 5th April 2024 your wholly owned house is worth £350,000, and 12 months later it is worth £370,000. Should that £20,000 be regarded as income (even though you have not sold it) and taxed at your IT rate?
Actually I think it would be overall good for the economy if it were.
I think the UK would be in a much better place if there was no private residence relief on CGT, nor on IHT.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
And knowing what we know now, it's possible that taxes were artificially low over the last few decades. As a nation, we spent the windfalls of North Sea oil, privatisation and favourable demographics as if they were ongoing income, not one-offs. No problem in spending the money, but the windfalls are over and I wish I could point to where it went.
Yes, we (nearly) all paid our taxes. But that doesn't mean we paid enough for the sort of state we wanted to live in.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
As a newbie to PB, I am working under the assumption that any political philosophy expounded is there for comment. But on the subject of inherited wealth, the current government may actually be very lucky. There is a lot of wealth built up within the boomer generation which will be passed down with relative levels of tax deducted. Future IHT and CGT income could transform government finances if only more of the current boomer cadre were to pass away. Perhaps a 2025 flu pandemic might do it.
I am sure its entirely coincidental that lawyers in November each year have a 'free will writing' a few months before a lot of these wills become live. Surely they are not that cynical.
IHT is sufficiently avoidable for the wealthy (and irrelevant to the not wealthy) that it is essentially voluntary.
This government has kept intact two great tax avoiding wheezes, while trashing its reputation by a small mistake over farms and businesses. (1) IHT avoidance is essentially untouched (2) CGT rebasing on death is untouched.
The little people are driving their tractors outside Downing Street. There is deathly silence from the big people, and their compliant media.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
Because the Government needs to raise taxes to pay for public services. If you tax income, such as salaries or self-employed income, why should you not tax other forms of income, especially as they tend to be enjoyed by wealthier people
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
If a house decreases in value, or a car (which is also an asset) do you think the state should give money to the owner to make up for the shortfall?
If you're not talking about allowing people to offset their gains from other assets against their house for CGT purporses, then that would be a great idea and transform the relative benefits of living, working and investing in areas of the country like the NE of England, where massive gains from house prices are not guaranteed.
I think you've stumbled across the ultimate "levelling up" policy.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Well we all know that, which is why any kind of fundamental reform of taxation is going to have to wait until a government is forced to do it by a proper disaster, most likely a sovereign debt crisis. Until then things will keep getting gradually worse. This is what you get when half the population has nothing left to give, the other half thinks it already pays too much, and the population dependency ratio is dreadful.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
Yes. On the whole work is massively overtaxed and not-work is massively undertaxed.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
I have sometimes thought that inheritance tax should be abolished, and inheritances treated as income. Indeed I would ignore all entreaties of the wealthy and tax all income the same.
What is income is a perennial question. Let us suppose that all income is taxed - which would be good. And inheritance - which is a capital matter in principle - is treated as income. Good.
Suppose that on 5th April 2024 your wholly owned house is worth £350,000, and 12 months later it is worth £370,000. Should that £20,000 be regarded as income (even though you have not sold it) and taxed at your IT rate?
Actually I think it would be overall good for the economy if it were.
I think the UK would be in a much better place if there was no private residence relief on CGT, nor on IHT.
Taxes on real property generally should be updated and rationalised. Real property has that wonderful quality of being hard to hide.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 4m MAIL ON SUNDAY: Musk and Cummings ‘in plot to sabotage UK politics’ #TomorrowsPapersToday
Maybe UK politics needs a bit of disruption.
There's a difference between thinking politics needs disrupting, and thinking any kind of disrupting is a good thing.
The difference between shaking things up and setting them on fire, for example.
Has the last decade been anything but political disruption ? I'd settle for some competent government. The kick the table over mobs have proved utterly useless.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
The problem is with logic is that bricks and mortar wealth is largely a mirrage, and substantial wealth taxes therefore can't raise all that much money because it's not there to be raised.
If the government start taxing housing wealth substantially, it will reduce the headline price of housing whilst making it less affordable. This won't raise much money, but the lowered headline prices will mean that building more housing is much less viable, so the housing shortages will get worse...
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
I have sometimes thought that inheritance tax should be abolished, and inheritances treated as income. Indeed I would ignore all entreaties of the wealthy and tax all income the same.
What is income is a perennial question. Let us suppose that all income is taxed - which would be good. And inheritance - which is a capital matter in principle - is treated as income. Good.
Suppose that on 5th April 2024 your wholly owned house is worth £350,000, and 12 months later it is worth £370,000. Should that £20,000 be regarded as income (even though you have not sold it) and taxed at your IT rate?
Actually I think it would be overall good for the economy if it were.
I think the UK would be in a much better place if there was no private residence relief on CGT, nor on IHT.
Taxes on real property generally should be updated and rationalised. Real property has that wonderful quality of being hard to hide.
Here's an interesting graph on ballooning agricultural land prices:
It's clearly not being driven by farms becoming massively more profitable.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
I already pay that, it's called council tax
Council tax is banded, not a percentage, so is quite a regressive tax. The highest bands are structured to be more than the lowest, but nowhere near the difference in value.
I install a new kitchen, thereby increasing the value of my home.
I then have to pay income tax on the added value?
Bonkers idea.
It would be a deductible expense as a legitimate improvement, as it is for second homes, BTL etc.
So it then becomes an administrative nightmare. Every home owner in the country having to send a pile of receipts to the tax office every year to account for all of their home improvements.
And an army of estate agents going from house to house to perform the annual valuation.
Of course, there is that lovely option of the homeowner self declaring the value, but being obliged to sell at 120% of that value to avoid blatant low-balling.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 4m MAIL ON SUNDAY: Musk and Cummings ‘in plot to sabotage UK politics’ #TomorrowsPapersToday
Maybe UK politics needs a bit of disruption.
There's a difference between thinking politics needs disrupting, and thinking any kind of disrupting is a good thing.
The difference between shaking things up and setting them on fire, for example.
Has the last decade been anything but political disruption ? I'd settle for some competent government. The kick the table over mobs have proved utterly useless.
Interesting article here on why the disaffected voters of Youngstown Ohio went more strongly for Trump despite him doing nothing for the town in his last term, indeed having lied to them.
Once you have kicked the table over, you might as well kick the crockery around too.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
I already pay that, it's called council tax
Council tax is banded, not a percentage, so is quite a regressive tax. The highest bands are structured to be more than the lowest, but nowhere near the difference in value.
Adding a few more council tax bands is an obvious thing to do.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
The problem is with logic is that bricks and mortar wealth is largely a mirrage, and substantial wealth taxes therefore can't raise all that much money because it's not there to be raised.
If the government start taxing housing wealth substantially, it will reduce the headline price of housing whilst making it less affordable. This won't raise much money, but the lowered headline prices will mean that building more housing is much less viable, so the housing shortages will get worse...
Housing is a highly desirable asset, which confers huge advantages on the owner (if you're renting into old age then you'll most likely be very poor and working til you drop,) and we have chronic problems with both an overall shortage of supply and with many of the units that are available being of the wrong type and/or in the wrong place. This is why housebuilders can get away with charging the Earth for new builds with tiny rooms that are often shoddily constructed. If none of this is sufficient to stop prices from tracking steadily upwards, then it seems unlikely that creaming the fat off legacies or higher property taxes are going to depress prices.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
I already pay that, it's called council tax
Council tax is banded, not a percentage, so is quite a regressive tax. The highest bands are structured to be more than the lowest, but nowhere near the difference in value.
And it's unfair across the country - councils in the NE of England have to levy more tax on a £200,000 property than one in London to raise the same amount of funds, because house prices in London have grown 2x as fast as in the NE.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
Private sector organisations have all the same shit. They just reserve it for their internal procedures.
You should have witnessed the nonsense a couple of my colleagues had to go through just to get their details updated to their new surnames following marriage.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
I have sometimes thought that inheritance tax should be abolished, and inheritances treated as income. Indeed I would ignore all entreaties of the wealthy and tax all income the same.
What is income is a perennial question. Let us suppose that all income is taxed - which would be good. And inheritance - which is a capital matter in principle - is treated as income. Good.
Suppose that on 5th April 2024 your wholly owned house is worth £350,000, and 12 months later it is worth £370,000. Should that £20,000 be regarded as income (even though you have not sold it) and taxed at your IT rate?
Actually I think it would be overall good for the economy if it were.
I think the UK would be in a much better place if there was no private residence relief on CGT, nor on IHT.
If Starmer wants to ensure he is a one term PM be my guest and do that. The Tories wouldn't believe their luck
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
An interesting conundrum. Should there be some sort of weighting as some people work a lot harder for a small amount of money compared to those who might just accumulate wealth by doing little. And how do you judge?
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
I have sometimes thought that inheritance tax should be abolished, and inheritances treated as income. Indeed I would ignore all entreaties of the wealthy and tax all income the same.
What is income is a perennial question. Let us suppose that all income is taxed - which would be good. And inheritance - which is a capital matter in principle - is treated as income. Good.
Suppose that on 5th April 2024 your wholly owned house is worth £350,000, and 12 months later it is worth £370,000. Should that £20,000 be regarded as income (even though you have not sold it) and taxed at your IT rate?
Actually I think it would be overall good for the economy if it were.
I think the UK would be in a much better place if there was no private residence relief on CGT, nor on IHT.
If Starmer wants to ensure he is a one term PM be my guest and do that. The Tories wouldn't believe their luck
What's good for the Labour party != what's good for the country. If they're going to do any sort of property tax reform, they'll do it on the sly via council tax.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
We've had this discussion many times on here.
1) it's easy nowadays to identify a good enough current value of a property. Between known original sale price and known recent sale prices for comparators an accurate value for 1st April 2024 should be possible.
2) You talk about a new Kitchen but wouldn't be a known factor until it became publicly known when you came to sale. It's perfectly sensible (and easier) for the valuation to be based on the previous sale - then you let the market reveal the new valuation on sale...
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
Private sector organisations have all the same shit. They just reserve it for their internal procedures.
You should have witnessed the nonsense a couple of my colleagues had to go through just to get their details updated to their new surnames following marriage.
If it is their internal procedures only then they are simply wasting their own time and money, not mine.
I install a new kitchen, thereby increasing the value of my home.
I then have to pay income tax on the added value?
Bonkers idea.
Yes, you'd have to introduce some sort of relief on that so that is equivalent to buying some shares.
No you wouldn't - because the only time you would really need to care about such things is when the house was sold.
That method is how the rest of the world works because final sale prices is really the only point where all the factors in a house value is determined. And the fairest way of avoiding any issues when it comes to valuations is going to be "well you paid £2.4m for that flat so you can hardly argue that we tax the property on that valuation)..
And as we've worked out before 1% (or so of house value) with stamp duty removed would make most people better off and provide a hell of an incentive for retired people in large houses to downsize..
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I don’t think there’s that much correlation between working hard and wealth accumulated, when you dig into it. I think an in depth analysis of PB contributors could amply demonstrate said hypothesis.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
Banks are a weird example to use. They are private businesses - if they have restricted opening hours, it's because they've worked out that's the best way to maximise profits. Indeed, it would take some sort of government legislation to force them to do the opposite...
Part of the reason the public sector is so expensive is because they can't/won't offload loads of the admin/grunt work to India, as my firm has. If you were to privatise large elements of the public sector, you'd find HMRC/DWP would do exactly the same. You might even have NHS dental treatment available in Turkey.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
In my experience, several govt services are much easier to use. Ordering a new passport or driving license, checking NI contributions, our GP practice is really good with phone consultations... mostly at a national level tbf.
Generally though I agree. Public service needs continual improvement and committed management because it doesn't have the same natural discipline of the market.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
In my experience, several govt services are much easier to use. Ordering a new passport or driving license, checking NI contributions, our GP practice is really good with phone consultations... mostly at a national level tbf.
Generally though I agree. Public service needs continual improvement and committed management because it doesn't have the same natural discipline of the market.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
Possibly the person passing on said inheritance would have preferred some of that money to go towards an ambulance to take them to hospital before they had the heart attack.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
What proportion of these problems is down to the staff being wilful and the organisation incompetent, and how much is down to the usual problem of too few people and not enough money?
Before very much longer, your average council will be statutory only and it won't even be able to manage those responsibilities properly. That's got very little to do with working from home and almost everything to do with a tsunami of homeless families, disturbed children and knackered old people that need looking after.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
Much of that is true, although I question this: Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less...
They really don't. They strive to be more attractive than their competitors, but their other motivation is to charge as much as possible for the least they can deliver - the profit motive.
Which is why monopolies and their near approximations are a very bad thing.
The Sunday Hardman comes out more promptly than the usual but absent Rawnsley; this week’s has been carefully edited to focus on the actual subject of why public inquiries don’t get actioned, to respect site rules:
There was an irony to Yvette Cooper rushing to the Commons last Monday and…[telling] MPs that what was important was ensuring that change actually happened, “rather than just thinking, ‘well, an announcement has been made’, but nothing changes and nothing is actually done”.
She was right, and that confusion between announcement and action is very common in Westminster, with leaders often thinking they’ve addressed an issue merely because they’ve given a speech about it, and the media often enabling that by not pursuing the action on the issue sufficiently. But Cooper herself was being moved by the raging tides of political debate to make an announcement, rather than having made it a few weeks before Christmas. After all, IICSA reported in 2022 and, while the Conservatives did very little other than welcome its recommendations, Labour could also have announced it was implementing them in the months between coming to power in July and this week, when there was enough media interest in the matter.
… the general course of action when a public inquiry finally reports is for ministers to give statements about the mistakes of the past and then to say they will be considering the recommendations seriously, before doing nothing at all to implement them. But there is no mechanism for parliament to follow up whether a public inquiry is being implemented by ministers. They may be asked about it in an ad hoc way at a select committee hearing, or on the floor of the House of Commons, but at no point is there a deadline to meet or a response to pen that would detail the progress of a government in ensuring that something is a “never again”.
What Westminster really needs to examine is whether it has the wherewithal to respond to that inquiry and make “never again” have meaning. And it definitely doesn’t need an inquiry into that question: we already have ample examples to show that the answer is no.
Explanatory: Her Guardian column is worth reading in full. As well as referring to the forbidden topic, it brings in the Iraq inquiry, Shipman, Essex mental health deaths, and Mid Staffs, to make a general case that the real issue is that while an inquiry is underway, it’s a reason for waiting rather than doing, and once an inquiry is published, everyone loses interest.
Sounds like a rehash of what I've been saying on here for years.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
We could say the same about the legal system.
Yes you could because it is a public service facilitated by a branch of the civil service. When I was involved in litigation in the US jury trials started at 9 and finished around 5. Here, we start at 10 and finish at 4. We manage to fit 5 court hours into a day as a maximum and it is normally less for a variety of reasons. A day in the High Court costs the public more than £12000.
Now I must say that there is always a lot that needs done in the morning before a court can start, there is often quite a lot that needs done after the court is adjourned for the day, my quality of life would suffer if court hours were extended. But what is the priority here? When it is taking the best part of a year to have a trial after the procedural hearing and typically 2.5 years from the date of offence, why is this means of increasing capacity not being looked at? In cases I have fixed trials in this last week the average date has been October. In some cases the accused, presumed innocent, is in jail until then. Why is this not outrageous?
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
I already pay that, it's called council tax
Council tax is banded, not a percentage, so is quite a regressive tax. The highest bands are structured to be more than the lowest, but nowhere near the difference in value.
Adding a few more council tax bands is an obvious thing to do.
The media will just roll out stories about little old ladies who have nothing but a state pension and a £20m mayfair townhouse.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
Hold on- loads of private businesses have terrible attitudes to their customers, even in notionally competitive markets.
Try getting through to broadband customer services. Or airlines. Consider the way that all sorts of firms gouge their long-term customers on price unless they threaten to cancel. Or the way that private schools kept bumping up their fees because they could.
It manifests slightly differently, but there isn't much of a moral difference between public sector people and private sector people.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
We could say the same about the legal system.
Yes you could because it is a public service facilitated by a branch of the civil service. When I was involved in litigation in the US jury trials started at 9 and finished around 5. Here, we start at 10 and finish at 4. We manage to fit 5 court hours into a day as a maximum and it is normally less for a variety of reasons. A day in the High Court costs the public more than £12000.
Now I must say that there is always a lot that needs done in the morning before a court can start, there is often quite a lot that needs done after the court is adjourned for the day, my quality of life would suffer if court hours were extended. But what is the priority here? When it is taking the best part of a year to have a trial after the procedural hearing and typically 2.5 years from the date of offence, why is this means of increasing capacity not being looked at? In cases I have fixed trials in this last week the average date has been October. In some cases the accused, presumed innocent, is in jail until then. Why is this not outrageous?
Two reasons:
1. Our addiction to false economies 2. We have all too often forgotten the "service" bit in public service and in private companies serving customers.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
Hold on- loads of private businesses have terrible attitudes to their customers, even in notionally competitive markets.
Try getting through to broadband customer services. Or airlines. Consider the way that all sorts of firms gouge their long-term customers on price unless they threaten to cancel. Or the way that private schools kept bumping up their fees because they could.
It manifests slightly differently, but there isn't much of a moral difference between public sector people and private sector people.
Often Customer service is a premium product for most important customers.
See for example First Direct's service and compare it to Natwest's core service (yes the example is slightly different but I've never used HSBC's service as I've always been a First Direct customer).
Likewise KLM*'s support is far better than Ryanair but that doesn't stop people using Ryanair as sometimes they are cheap
* And KLM's support differs depending on customer status as well but that's a different matter.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
That's never going to happen. You tan tax people to death and services will still be ahite.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2024)
"Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities."
"Ignorance is his stock in trade, camouflaged by purple prose, inane fluff, and (un)righteous indignation. The Message has proven that conclusively. His lack of self-awareness, simple errors of fact, parochial worldview, incuriosity about history or context, entrenched bias, and failure to ask basic follow-up questions make this book a searing indictment of its author and the cult that has grown up around him."
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
That's never going to happen. You tan tax people to death and services will still be ahite.
What makes you say that? Looking around the world, once you strip out tax havens and basket cases, most places get roughly the quality of services they pay for.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
As a newbie to PB, I am working under the assumption that any political philosophy expounded is there for comment. But on the subject of inherited wealth, the current government may actually be very lucky. There is a lot of wealth built up within the boomer generation which will be passed down with relative levels of tax deducted. Future IHT and CGT income could transform government finances if only more of the current boomer cadre were to pass away. Perhaps a 2025 flu pandemic might do it.
I am sure its entirely coincidental that lawyers in November each year have a 'free will writing' a few months before a lot of these wills become live. Surely they are not that cynical.
The free will thing I think is to avoid people dying intestate which is an ffing pain in the ass to sort out. Richer clients who happen by are the gloss.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
When a service is put online, it becomes 24 hours, 7 days a week (normally - there are exceptions like Companies House whose website is 9...5).
Now, online's not for everyone, of course. But it's a meaningful increase in hours.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2024)
"Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities."
"Ignorance is his stock in trade, camouflaged by purple prose, inane fluff, and (un)righteous indignation. The Message has proven that conclusively. His lack of self-awareness, simple errors of fact, parochial worldview, incuriosity about history or context, entrenched bias, and failure to ask basic follow-up questions make this book a searing indictment of its author and the cult that has grown up around him."
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
What proportion of these problems is down to the staff being wilful and the organisation incompetent, and how much is down to the usual problem of too few people and not enough money?
Before very much longer, your average council will be statutory only and it won't even be able to manage those responsibilities properly. That's got very little to do with working from home and almost everything to do with a tsunami of homeless families, disturbed children and knackered old people that need looking after.
One of the accused I was dealing with this week arrived in this country 12 years ago as an unaccompanied minor. He has, ever since, lived in hotels at our expense because of the way our system is set up. He is restricted in what he can do in terms of work. He has had very limited education. He still needs a translator after being here all that time. He has got himself in quite serious trouble. Is this surprising? Not at all. What an appalling life. We are spending insane amounts on our immigration and asylum system for very poor results.
There are some demographic pressures, we are getting older as a society. But the suggestion that we cannot improve both the quality and efficiency of the services being provided is simply wrong.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2024)
"Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities."
"Ignorance is his stock in trade, camouflaged by purple prose, inane fluff, and (un)righteous indignation. The Message has proven that conclusively. His lack of self-awareness, simple errors of fact, parochial worldview, incuriosity about history or context, entrenched bias, and failure to ask basic follow-up questions make this book a searing indictment of its author and the cult that has grown up around him."
That sounds nonsense. I haven't read the book, but the dude is an autodidact. To accuse him of incuriosity is weak rhetoric, which is plainly wrong.
Autodidact?
"Coates's father founded and ran Black Classic Press, a publishing company specializing in African-American titles. The Press grew out of a grassroots organization, the George Jackson Prison Movement (GJPM), which initially operated a Black bookstore called the Black Book. Later, Black Classic Press was established with a tabletop printing press in the basement of the Coates family home."
"He attended Howard University, leaving after five years to start a career in journalism."
Other than his not graduating, I don't see what makes him an autodidact.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
What proportion of these problems is down to the staff being wilful and the organisation incompetent, and how much is down to the usual problem of too few people and not enough money?
Before very much longer, your average council will be statutory only and it won't even be able to manage those responsibilities properly. That's got very little to do with working from home and almost everything to do with a tsunami of homeless families, disturbed children and knackered old people that need looking after.
One of the accused I was dealing with this week arrived in this country 12 years ago as an unaccompanied minor. He has, ever since, lived in hotels at our expense because of the way our system is set up. He is restricted in what he can do in terms of work. He has had very limited education. He still needs a translator after being here all that time. He has got himself in quite serious trouble. Is this surprising? Not at all. What an appalling life. We are spending insane amounts on our immigration and asylum system for very poor results.
There are some demographic pressures, we are getting older as a society. But the suggestion that we cannot improve both the quality and efficiency of the services being provided is simply wrong.
While that's clearly an awful case where revealing details is going to be problematic - it's also the type of story that needs publicity to show how badly things have gone wrong in so many ways for so long.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Hence Foxy's dictum "a fair tax is one paid by other people".
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
I already pay that, it's called council tax
Council tax is banded, not a percentage, so is quite a regressive tax. The highest bands are structured to be more than the lowest, but nowhere near the difference in value.
Adding a few more council tax bands is an obvious thing to do.
The media will just roll out stories about little old ladies who have nothing but a state pension and a £20m mayfair townhouse.
Even popular tax rises get panned in the media. A govt which aspires to do better still has to do it. The status quo is not popular either.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
Much of that is true, although I question this: Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less...
They really don't. They strive to be more attractive than their competitors, but their other motivation is to charge as much as possible for the least they can deliver - the profit motive.
Which is why monopolies and their near approximations are a very bad thing.
I did acknowledge that monopolies were an exception. Oligopolies can be also. Does anyone believe that allowing Vodaphone and Three to amalgamate will improve the public service quality of their offerings or those of their competitors? We need to encourage real competition not cosy clubs.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
We could say the same about the legal system.
Yes you could because it is a public service facilitated by a branch of the civil service. When I was involved in litigation in the US jury trials started at 9 and finished around 5. Here, we start at 10 and finish at 4. We manage to fit 5 court hours into a day as a maximum and it is normally less for a variety of reasons. A day in the High Court costs the public more than £12000.
Now I must say that there is always a lot that needs done in the morning before a court can start, there is often quite a lot that needs done after the court is adjourned for the day, my quality of life would suffer if court hours were extended. But what is the priority here? When it is taking the best part of a year to have a trial after the procedural hearing and typically 2.5 years from the date of offence, why is this means of increasing capacity not being looked at? In cases I have fixed trials in this last week the average date has been October. In some cases the accused, presumed innocent, is in jail until then. Why is this not outrageous?
We are seeing the long term effects of austerity right across the public sector. A year or two is manageable, a decade or two causes a major decline in the quality of service. It's like in my work, in order to catch up in a sustainable way we need to do 15% or so extra work every month over baseline, and that doesn't just cost money, it requires physical infrastructure.
One effect of the current flu crisis is that there are no beds for elective surgery, so waiting lists get longer. Those 5000 extra beds we were promised never appeared.
There is always scope for improved productivity, but improving productivity requires investment in capital equipment, IT and in staff training, all of which have been pared to the bone in favour of "front line services". It's a hollow shell.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
What proportion of these problems is down to the staff being wilful and the organisation incompetent, and how much is down to the usual problem of too few people and not enough money?
Before very much longer, your average council will be statutory only and it won't even be able to manage those responsibilities properly. That's got very little to do with working from home and almost everything to do with a tsunami of homeless families, disturbed children and knackered old people that need looking after.
One of the accused I was dealing with this week arrived in this country 12 years ago as an unaccompanied minor. He has, ever since, lived in hotels at our expense because of the way our system is set up. He is restricted in what he can do in terms of work. He has had very limited education. He still needs a translator after being here all that time. He has got himself in quite serious trouble. Is this surprising? Not at all. What an appalling life. We are spending insane amounts on our immigration and asylum system for very poor results.
There are some demographic pressures, we are getting older as a society. But the suggestion that we cannot improve both the quality and efficiency of the services being provided is simply wrong.
Oh I agree, and I don't doubt that there are areas of maladministration that remain to be addressed. But there's still no getting away from the fact that the primary problem underlying the deterioration of the public services is the imbalance between demand and available resources. Returning to your previous example, when local authorities are having to spend the bulk of their budgets on social care, it's small wonder that everything else suffers.
I'm interested that in the one I posted yesterday, Eleanor Frances flags up their (her? ) support from the Free Speech Union - which deserves a look.
Toby Young is exceptionally lampoonable, but has imo been a little over-satirised by some - eg the "Tobes Supports Eugenics" attack was heavily overdone.
I've remarked that haye positive achievements in some cases, though I am concerned with their potential political positioning - which could swing towards an American Right free speech fundmentalist, even Muskovite, perspective.
To get far they need to make themselves quite non-partisan - perhaps towards a right-leaning version of the left-leaning NCCL. IMO their biggest risks is getting Free Speech muddled up with partisan politics; that ultimately won't work in the UK, and currently they show some party-alignment, or rather anti-party-alignment.
But they are on the scene now, and are becoming significant as an organisation. They are a Company Limited by Guarantee, have 15 staff, an annual income of around £1-1.5 million, and claim 20k members paying at least £59 each per annum, and "supporters" making it up to 30k+ *. There's a risk that they could become respectable !
As a scale check, that makes them somewhat smaller than Humanists UK, who are about double on turnover, but have a commercial income from 10% levies on Humanist Weddings (last time I looked). HUK are very cagey about membership numbers, claiming 120k "members and supporters", but I think "supporters" means "people on our email list" (again, unless their practice has changed). In any case they work primarily though a network of influencers in politics. That 120k number is perhaps a "community" figure. Whenever I have seen their "are you a humanist" survey, pretty much every church minister I have ever known could qualify.
An interesting point for me re:FSU is their "partner" organisations listed on the front page. https://freespeechunion.org/
* Anglican Clergy Membership is discounted at £34.99, which for some reason I find a little amusing.
"So, Starmer and Reeves must bear the impact of crashing into the brick wall of [an emergency Budget on] 26 March together. Between them, they have failed to give themselves enough room to avoid the collision. The only thing that can save them is some good luck on the economy that brings the OBR forecast back into line with Reeves’s fiscal rules in time."
I've come to the conclusion that this and every future Government is going to fail, until something effective is done about both economic inequality and the dependency ratio. The measures required, which will essentially amount to stripping wealthy elderly people and their heirs of a large chunk of their riches, and telling everyone under the age of about fifty that they will have to keep working into their seventies before they can claim the state pension, are going to be so unpopular that the country will have to keep circling the plughole until it falls into some major systemic crisis that will force ministers to act.
An unsustainable rise in gilt yields as foreign investors conclude that we are a basket case seems the most likely scenario, although the collapse of the healthcare system leading to mass avoidable fatalities might also do it. We shall see.
Would you mind explaining why people who've spent all their lives working hard to build up an inheritance should be forced to give it up for people who haven't done so?
I'll leave aside any discussion of the Boomers as the luckiest generation in history, and instead simply ask: Where else is all the money going to come from? The state is collapsing under the weight of dependency already, and much of business and most of the working age population has already been bled white.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
Although I'm sceptical about the "I earned it" argument against taxation of assets. You didn't earn it. You earned enough to buy it at the the original price. The rest of the value is capital gain, asset inflation, call it what you will. Why should that not be taxed?
Why should it? We shouldn't tax things just because you can.
That isn’t the point. The point is to find additional ways to fund the quality and extent of government services that the electorate demands
IMV there's a fundamental issue: the electorate demands 'better' public services, but are less keen to pay for it. Or, more accurately, they want someone else to pay for it.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
This is something of a cliché and it is a cliché because there is a lot of truth in it. But think of it from a private sector perspective.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
HMRC's issues are due to reduced staffing numbers.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
When was the last time a public service increased its opening hours or availability to the public? I remember when banks had restricted opening hours and then they didn't. Why are public services immune from such improvements? Because they are principally concerned with the people who work in them, not what they are actually doing. I am fed up of it.
When a service is put online, it becomes 24 hours, 7 days a week (normally - there are exceptions like Companies House whose website is 9...5).
Now, online's not for everyone, of course. But it's a meaningful increase in hours.
My GP practice, and my local hospital, have both been increasing their hours.
A the GP routine is 8:30am to 6pm. They have a service called GP Extended Access with is from 7am two mornings a week, and continues until 8pm one everning per week, and sometimes operates on Saturdays. In addition to the GP24 out of hours service cover from the PCT.
And my local hospital has been doing Saturdays and Sundays for some clinics for some time - several years.
Plus we all have 111, which came in in 2014 as a national service - upgrading from NHS Direct.
Comments
Not liked by Musk.
Wants Begum to return to the UK.
Is against capital punishment.
The difference between shaking things up and setting them on fire, for example.
Although the top billionaire owners I imagine will remain a bit more constant, since their goals of amassing power and influence for themselves is a bit more traditional than the generic attitudes of the industry area as a whole, and their actions more focused as a result.
https://nitter.poast.org/Eleanor_Frances/status/1878164412139184162
In it he extols the virtues of Eastern Europe (narrator: technically it's Central Europe) and about how it is advancing, and even overtaking, Western Europe in culinary and other fields. Some of you may recall me pointing this out in military matters in my article on the Intermarium two years ago. You can find it here: https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2023/01/29/the-intermarium/
It's a shame, although we do have more large retail parks than ever before and the burgeoning number of burger flipping premises has seen a remarkable growth.
Or to take the philosophy further, should there be 100% inheritance tax so we all start life the same.
We have tried to give our son a good start in life: I give him extra coaching in maths, Mrs J coaches him in English, and we try to further interests he develops. Hopefully he is getting a good start in life.
One of his friends has a single mother, who, to put it mildly, is struggling, and he often misses school.
Our son has advantages that other lad does not have. How do you level-up (or down...) so they 'start life the same' ?
The notion the state should confiscate all your possessions upon death is certainly insane.
Mr Dancer, are you OK?
You’ve just quoted another poster…
I suppose it speaks volumes when people are prepared to spend an icy January evening at Sandown Park but interesting to read how Reform activists seem to be sticking with Farage.
It was also interesting to see the positive comments for Rupert Lowe as a possible post-Farage leader given he is seven years older than Farage. Lowe seems to be the archetypal businessman turned politician and we hear the old schtick about we need more business people in politics.
The problem is business people are used to command and control - they cajole or coerce. In politics that doesn’t work even if you are primus inter pares - you still need to argue and persuade colleagues and history shows even the greatest leaders often have their biggest enemies behind them rather than in front of them.
Reform seem a messy coalition held together by Farage and immigration. Beyond that, I struggle to see much cohesive but you could probably the same of the other broad coalitions we call parties. How it will evolve in the next 2-3 years will be fundamental to much of British politics.
If we're going to have enough capacity in the health and social care system, as well as for an adequate defence establishment, policing, courts of law and everything else, then the obvious place to look is asset wealth, and most particularly the immense store of treasure locked up in residential property.
I've actually a certain amount of sympathy for the "But I paid my taxes?!" attitude - at the end of a lifetime of toil, it's small wonder that people want the bloody government to finally leave them alone - and if only 2% of the population were retired then society could afford to keep indulging them with an endless regime of inflation busting pension hikes and light touch taxation. But they're not 2%, they're 20%, and rising. And I've no time at all for the facile attitude that anyone who is worth less money than I am is one of the undeserving poor and should be left to rot. Rescuing the less well off isn't about rewarding laziness or failure, it's about having a decent society, a functioning society, and about the mutualisation of risk.
The money has to come from somewhere, and we have already reached the point where better off retirees really need to join the rest of us in being rinsed for funds. The hospitals are already collapsing under the weight of need in a manner that we went through lockdowns only five years ago in an effort to avoid, just because of a difficult flu season, and the rows and rows of frightened elderly people on trolleys in A&E departments waiting days for a bed will include both those who could and could not afford to buy a house, regardless of how hard they bloody worked decades ago.
Your house is only worth so much to you if you suffer a nasty fall and have to lie on the kitchen floor in your own piss for two days waiting for an ambulance to turn up, and it's also only worth so much if the police are too weak and depleted to bother to investigate if someone breaks into it and nicks all your jewellery. So, what do we do?
There was an irony to Yvette Cooper rushing to the Commons last Monday and…[telling] MPs that what was important was ensuring that change actually happened, “rather than just thinking, ‘well, an announcement has been made’, but nothing changes and nothing is actually done”.
She was right, and that confusion between announcement and action is very common in Westminster, with leaders often thinking they’ve addressed an issue merely because they’ve given a speech about it, and the media often enabling that by not pursuing the action on the issue sufficiently. But Cooper herself was being moved by the raging tides of political debate to make an announcement, rather than having made it a few weeks before Christmas. After all, IICSA reported in 2022 and, while the Conservatives did very little other than welcome its recommendations, Labour could also have announced it was implementing them in the months between coming to power in July and this week, when there was enough media interest in the matter.
… the general course of action when a public inquiry finally reports is for ministers to give statements about the mistakes of the past and then to say they will be considering the recommendations seriously, before doing nothing at all to implement them. But there is no mechanism for parliament to follow up whether a public inquiry is being implemented by ministers. They may be asked about it in an ad hoc way at a select committee hearing, or on the floor of the House of Commons, but at no point is there a deadline to meet or a response to pen that would detail the progress of a government in ensuring that something is a “never again”.
What Westminster really needs to examine is whether it has the wherewithal to respond to that inquiry and make “never again” have meaning. And it definitely doesn’t need an inquiry into that question: we already have ample examples to show that the answer is no.
Explanatory: Her Guardian column is worth reading in full. As well as referring to the forbidden topic, it brings in the Iraq inquiry, Shipman, Essex mental health deaths, and Mid Staffs, to make a general case that the real issue is that while an inquiry is underway, it’s a reason for waiting rather than doing, and once an inquiry is published, everyone loses interest.
This Government has already started doing that by proposing a years long inquiry into social care reform, which has no other function than to prevent Streeting from having to order a costly expansion of provision and demand the money off Reeves. In this aspect at least, the current administration is no different to any of its predecessors.
Which is why few parties go into elections telling the electorate that they're going to put up loads of taxes...
Suppose that on 5th April 2024 your wholly owned house is worth £350,000, and 12 months later it is worth £370,000. Should that £20,000 be regarded as income (even though you have not sold it) and taxed at your IT rate?
Actually I think it would be overall good for the economy if it were.
If you are going to make this direct link between the State Pension and contributions, it implies that the State Pension will become much, much larger in the future. Which, as you point out above, is impossible.
I am sure its entirely coincidental that lawyers in November each year have a 'free will writing' a few months before a lot of these wills become live. Surely they are not that cynical.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210943364-the-message
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Nonfiction (2024)
"Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities."
Yes, we (nearly) all paid our taxes. But that doesn't mean we paid enough for the sort of state we wanted to live in.
This government has kept intact two great tax avoiding wheezes, while trashing its reputation by a small mistake over farms and businesses. (1) IHT avoidance is essentially untouched (2) CGT rebasing on death is untouched.
The little people are driving their tractors outside Downing Street. There is deathly silence from the big people, and their compliant media.
Rather than revalue houses every year and charge CGT, isn't a simpler property tax paid annually better, something like 1% of value?
I think you've stumbled across the ultimate "levelling up" policy.
Let's hope it doesn't also take the second.
I then have to pay income tax on the added value?
Bonkers idea.
I'd settle for some competent government. The kick the table over mobs have proved utterly useless.
If the government start taxing housing wealth substantially, it will reduce the headline price of housing whilst making it less affordable. This won't raise much money, but the lowered headline prices will mean that building more housing is much less viable, so the housing shortages will get worse...
It's clearly not being driven by farms becoming massively more profitable.
And an army of estate agents going from house to house to perform the annual valuation.
Of course, there is that lovely option of the homeowner self declaring the value, but being obliged to sell at 120% of that value to avoid blatant low-balling.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less. That is how they remain competitive. They will invest to improve their product or service in both technology and training. So why can't our public sector achieve the same? Why is it a given that they can only do more with more? Or, in recent times less with more? That is the real problem we face.
We have recently tried to register my Mother in law's death. There are no Registrars Offices open to the public anymore as there were when my mother died. You phone a number and you find that it is the local authority's general number. Getting through was complicated and time consuming (as it always is when you have to contact Angus Council about anything, one of their favourite tricks is to say the person you want is not currently available and then cut you off). When you do eventually get through the long queue you are told everything has to be done online. But even when you have given all the relevant information that is not the death registered. You then need to have a discussion with the Registrar himself once he has looked at the information provided. His next available appointment was 8 days away. You cannot proceed to organise the funeral until you have done this.
The whole procedure seems entirely for the convenience of those who work in it. No consideration at all is given as to what is convenient for the public using that service or what they might want. This is typical of so many public sector services now. No business, without a monopoly, could possibly operate that way. Why do we have to put up with this? Why is it more important that they can work from home, have flexible hours for them, not for the public, always be "exceptionally busy", set their own pace, etc etc. And don't get me started on HMRC whose service has deteriorated beyond measure since the local offices shut. There is, in my view, a real mindset problem here.
Once you have kicked the table over, you might as well kick the crockery around too.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/11/there-are-a-lot-of-bitter-people-here-im-one-of-them-rust-belt-voters-on-why-they-backed-trump-again-despite-his-broken-promises?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
You should have witnessed the nonsense a couple of my colleagues had to go through just to get their details updated to their new surnames following marriage.
Angus's problem is utter stupidity. their front line customer service should be filling in those forms for those unable / unwilling to do so because otherwise it's straightforward age / disability discrimination. And remember my day job is exactly this type of productivity improvement.
https://www.gov.uk/after-a-death/organisations-you-need-to-contact-and-tell-us-once
1) it's easy nowadays to identify a good enough current value of a property. Between known original sale price and known recent sale prices for comparators an accurate value for 1st April 2024 should be possible.
2) You talk about a new Kitchen but wouldn't be a known factor until it became publicly known when you came to sale. It's perfectly sensible (and easier) for the valuation to be based on the previous sale - then you let the market reveal the new valuation on sale...
A video of someone walking from Burton Joyce to Nottingham in the floods, also with a drone, from the Trekking Exploration channel.
Filmed yesterday. 20 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0-cidFfUyM
That method is how the rest of the world works because final sale prices is really the only point where all the factors in a house value is determined. And the fairest way of avoiding any issues when it comes to valuations is going to be "well you paid £2.4m for that flat so you can hardly argue that we tax the property on that valuation)..
And as we've worked out before 1% (or so of house value) with stamp duty removed would make most people better off and provide a hell of an incentive for retired people in large houses to downsize..
Part of the reason the public sector is so expensive is because they can't/won't offload loads of the admin/grunt work to India, as my firm has. If you were to privatise large elements of the public sector, you'd find HMRC/DWP would do exactly the same. You might even have NHS dental treatment available in Turkey.
Generally though I agree. Public service needs continual improvement and committed management because it doesn't have the same natural discipline of the market.
Before very much longer, your average council will be statutory only and it won't even be able to manage those responsibilities properly. That's got very little to do with working from home and almost everything to do with a tsunami of homeless families, disturbed children and knackered old people that need looking after.
Most businesses, who want to remain in business, constantly strive to give their customers more for less...
They really don't.
They strive to be more attractive than their competitors, but their other motivation is to charge as much as possible for the least they can deliver - the profit motive.
Which is why monopolies and their near approximations are a very bad thing.
Now I must say that there is always a lot that needs done in the morning before a court can start, there is often quite a lot that needs done after the court is adjourned for the day, my quality of life would suffer if court hours were extended. But what is the priority here? When it is taking the best part of a year to have a trial after the procedural hearing and typically 2.5 years from the date of offence, why is this means of increasing capacity not being looked at? In cases I have fixed trials in this last week the average date has been October. In some cases the accused, presumed innocent, is in jail until then. Why is this not outrageous?
Try getting through to broadband customer services. Or airlines. Consider the way that all sorts of firms gouge their long-term customers on price unless they threaten to cancel. Or the way that private schools kept bumping up their fees because they could.
It manifests slightly differently, but there isn't much of a moral difference between public sector people and private sector people.
There were two cases I mentioned: the Eleanor Frances settlement which @MattW has already posted. And this one (the case is still ongoing). The decision has the same outcome as a case brought by a nurse in Fife -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mRKgm3j1O5e3BgDIeuESpaaJEZ2k_A_2/view
The competitors have a week in which to complete the 268 miles. Conditions on Kinder, Bleaklow and Black Hill must be exceptionally wintry....
You can track them here:
https://live.opentracking.co.uk/spinerace25/
1. Our addiction to false economies
2. We have all too often forgotten the "service" bit in public service and in private companies serving customers.
See for example First Direct's service and compare it to Natwest's core service (yes the example is slightly different but I've never used HSBC's service as I've always been a First Direct customer).
Likewise KLM*'s support is far better than Ryanair but that doesn't stop people using Ryanair as sometimes they are cheap
* And KLM's support differs depending on customer status as well but that's a different matter.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/mike-cote/ta-nehisi-coates-charlatan/
Now, online's not for everyone, of course. But it's a meaningful increase in hours.
I haven't read the book, but the dude is an autodidact. To accuse him of incuriosity is weak rhetoric, which is plainly wrong.
There are some demographic pressures, we are getting older as a society. But the suggestion that we cannot improve both the quality and efficiency of the services being provided is simply wrong.
"Coates's father founded and ran Black Classic Press, a publishing company specializing in African-American titles. The Press grew out of a grassroots organization, the George Jackson Prison Movement (GJPM), which initially operated a Black bookstore called the Black Book. Later, Black Classic Press was established with a tabletop printing press in the basement of the Coates family home."
"He attended Howard University, leaving after five years to start a career in journalism."
Other than his not graduating, I don't see what makes him an autodidact.
NEW THREAD
One effect of the current flu crisis is that there are no beds for elective surgery, so waiting lists get longer. Those 5000 extra beds we were promised never appeared.
There is always scope for improved productivity, but improving productivity requires investment in capital equipment, IT and in staff training, all of which have been pared to the bone in favour of "front line services". It's a hollow shell.
Toby Young is exceptionally lampoonable, but has imo been a little over-satirised by some - eg the "Tobes Supports Eugenics" attack was heavily overdone.
I've remarked that haye positive achievements in some cases, though I am concerned with their potential political positioning - which could swing towards an American Right free speech fundmentalist, even Muskovite, perspective.
To get far they need to make themselves quite non-partisan - perhaps towards a right-leaning version of the left-leaning NCCL. IMO their biggest risks is getting Free Speech muddled up with partisan politics; that ultimately won't work in the UK, and currently they show some party-alignment, or rather anti-party-alignment.
But they are on the scene now, and are becoming significant as an organisation. They are a Company Limited by Guarantee, have 15 staff, an annual income of around £1-1.5 million, and claim 20k members paying at least £59 each per annum, and "supporters" making it up to 30k+ *. There's a risk that they could become respectable !
As a scale check, that makes them somewhat smaller than Humanists UK, who are about double on turnover, but have a commercial income from 10% levies on Humanist Weddings (last time I looked). HUK are very cagey about membership numbers, claiming 120k "members and supporters", but I think "supporters" means "people on our email list" (again, unless their practice has changed). In any case they work primarily though a network of influencers in politics. That 120k number is perhaps a "community" figure. Whenever I have seen their "are you a humanist" survey, pretty much every church minister I have ever known could qualify.
An interesting point for me re:FSU is their "partner" organisations listed on the front page.
https://freespeechunion.org/
* Anglican Clergy Membership is discounted at £34.99, which for some reason I find a little amusing.
A the GP routine is 8:30am to 6pm. They have a service called GP Extended Access with is from 7am two mornings a week, and continues until 8pm one everning per week, and sometimes operates on Saturdays. In addition to the GP24 out of hours service cover from the PCT.
And my local hospital has been doing Saturdays and Sundays for some clinics for some time - several years.
Plus we all have 111, which came in in 2014 as a national service - upgrading from NHS Direct.
Let's give credit where it is due.