I've read some of the excerpts from the big AI speech and it's complete nonsense.
This is the UK government version of startups adding AI to their company name just before going to VC pitch meetings. It's laughable that they're wasting time on this as a policy announcement, more and more I find the companies who shout loudest about how much they "do AI" are the ones who have the least knowledge on how to properly implement it, this government is going to be exactly the same. The biggest productivity gains from AI will be at the lowest levels, implementing it in customer service, using it for basic comms and triaging customer problems for departments. None of that is a big strategy but customers of government departments could see huge benefits from AI because they would have a much better initial experience than they currently get wading through the treacle that is government customer service.
AI is today's dead cat, as it gets dutifully covered, and isn't about tax, spend, borrow, gilts, NHS, social care, Trump, the economy, IHT, NI, etc.
People massively over-use "dead cat" these days.
Now there's a proper dead cat on the table successfully switching the subject to that of dead cats.
I don't think the Remain campaign was shit - it was very good. Fear was what they had, and they deployed it well.
I also think the Leave campaign was rubbish.
I think without both of those factors, Leave's victory would have been far more emphatic.
Because Leave won it's forgotten now that the Leave campaign was fractious, poorly organised and crap. And I was in it.
I certainly didn't expect a win.
The remain campaign was, however, worse.
I know the status quo isn’t an easy sell but they really did a bad job of selling something that was - easy holidays and we didn’t even have to give up the pound
Just got an email from an NHS trust (I sold them some software) advertising a webinar. They say it is ok for them to send the email because I am a "formal contact" since I am in the procurement system. Fair enough. All very GDPR.
But they didn't use BCC, so now I know the email addresses of the other thousand or so "formal contacts"...
Whoops. That’s an Information Commissioner’s complaint right there.
Who still uses BCC emails, rather than having a marketing system send individual messages?
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
If Reeves goes I can see Starmer going within a year
It would damage him enormously. Losing a chancellor always does - and in these circumstances?
For that reason alone he will do his best to keep her
I've read some of the excerpts from the big AI speech and it's complete nonsense.
This is the UK government version of startups adding AI to their company name just before going to VC pitch meetings. It's laughable that they're wasting time on this as a policy announcement, more and more I find the companies who shout loudest about how much they "do AI" are the ones who have the least knowledge on how to properly implement it, this government is going to be exactly the same. The biggest productivity gains from AI will be at the lowest levels, implementing it in customer service, using it for basic comms and triaging customer problems for departments. None of that is a big strategy but customers of government departments could see huge benefits from AI because they would have a much better initial experience than they currently get wading through the treacle that is government customer service.
AI is today's dead cat, as it gets dutifully covered, and isn't about tax, spend, borrow, gilts, NHS, social care, Trump, the economy, IHT, NI, etc.
I don't think you really expect any politician (or indeed civil servant) to know anything at all about AI. The key thing is to signal that you're open to it, won't regulate it away, and crucially will allow the public sector to lead the way and take on some of the initial risk.
As Max says, some of the biggest gains could be in simple stuff. Given the very high labour costs associated with UK-based staff in DWP, HMRC and the NHS, you can see how the government could really crack on with AI as long as they embrace it properly - the relative benefits are much higher than for a private firm employing cheap labour abroad.
Again, I'd say people could be more specific what they mean by AI. AI has been in regular use in the NHS for several decades.
Just got an email from an NHS trust (I sold them some software) advertising a webinar. They say it is ok for them to send the email because I am a "formal contact" since I am in the procurement system. Fair enough. All very GDPR.
But they didn't use BCC, so now I know the email addresses of the other thousand or so "formal contacts"...
Whoops. That’s an Information Commissioner’s complaint right there.
Who still uses BCC emails, rather than having a marketing system send individual messages?
It's a forward of a Cabinet Office email - so that's why it was done manually, I suppose.
Just got an email from an NHS trust (I sold them some software) advertising a webinar. They say it is ok for them to send the email because I am a "formal contact" since I am in the procurement system. Fair enough. All very GDPR.
But they didn't use BCC, so now I know the email addresses of the other thousand or so "formal contacts"...
I've read some of the excerpts from the big AI speech and it's complete nonsense.
This is the UK government version of startups adding AI to their company name just before going to VC pitch meetings. It's laughable that they're wasting time on this as a policy announcement, more and more I find the companies who shout loudest about how much they "do AI" are the ones who have the least knowledge on how to properly implement it, this government is going to be exactly the same. The biggest productivity gains from AI will be at the lowest levels, implementing it in customer service, using it for basic comms and triaging customer problems for departments. None of that is a big strategy but customers of government departments could see huge benefits from AI because they would have a much better initial experience than they currently get wading through the treacle that is government customer service.
AI is today's dead cat, as it gets dutifully covered, and isn't about tax, spend, borrow, gilts, NHS, social care, Trump, the economy, IHT, NI, etc.
People massively over-use "dead cat" these days.
Now there's a proper dead cat on the table successfully switching the subject to that of dead cats.
Just got an email from an NHS trust (I sold them some software) advertising a webinar. They say it is ok for them to send the email because I am a "formal contact" since I am in the procurement system. Fair enough. All very GDPR.
But they didn't use BCC, so now I know the email addresses of the other thousand or so "formal contacts"...
Whoops. That’s an Information Commissioner’s complaint right there.
Who still uses BCC emails, rather than having a marketing system send individual messages?
NHS (when they remember - see above). Me. The chap with the nuclear codes (when he remembers).
I don't think the Remain campaign was shit - it was very good. Fear was what they had, and they deployed it well.
I also think the Leave campaign was rubbish.
I think without both of those factors, Leave's victory would have been far more emphatic.
Because Leave won it's forgotten now that the Leave campaign was fractious, poorly organised and crap. And I was in it.
I certainly didn't expect a win.
Yes, as someone who also campaigned for it, the amount of revisionism about how amazing the Leave campaign was is funny to me. There would be days where volunteers turned up but we had no instructions or material to give them because no one had sent anything to us. The reason Leave won is because people didn't like the EU or immigration and they saw it as a way of giving the elite a good kicking. It isn't really any more complicated than that. All of these people talking about how the Remain side needed to run a positive campaign are kidding themselves too, there is a tiny proportion of the UK public, then and now, who feel positively towards the EU and any campaign which tried to capture some positive sentiment or engender such would have ended with a Leave landslide. No, the Remain campaign did well to get to 48% and while there was a path to to a Remain vote before Dave's renegotiation, after that I think it became impossible.
I think that just about sums it up. The masses were given an all too rare opportunity to give the elite a kicking and for their vote actually to make a difference.
And they took it.
And it's the same story in France and the Netherlands when the public got their chance to give the elite a kicking over the EU constitution they turned around and told the EU and the elites to get fucked. I don't think the UK is some wild outlier as some try and paint it.
Sure, and one of the reasons for Brexit was that the elite refused to let us give them that kicking at any point dating back to Maastricht.
I've read some of the excerpts from the big AI speech and it's complete nonsense.
This is the UK government version of startups adding AI to their company name just before going to VC pitch meetings. It's laughable that they're wasting time on this as a policy announcement, more and more I find the companies who shout loudest about how much they "do AI" are the ones who have the least knowledge on how to properly implement it, this government is going to be exactly the same. The biggest productivity gains from AI will be at the lowest levels, implementing it in customer service, using it for basic comms and triaging customer problems for departments. None of that is a big strategy but customers of government departments could see huge benefits from AI because they would have a much better initial experience than they currently get wading through the treacle that is government customer service.
AI is today's dead cat, as it gets dutifully covered, and isn't about tax, spend, borrow, gilts, NHS, social care, Trump, the economy, IHT, NI, etc.
It didn't work though, the story is now RR getting the dreaded vote of confidence. Tomorrow's media will all be speculation on who replaces her and which of the budget measures will need to be reversed to win back market confidence.
I suspect it’s more tax increases because I don’t think there is anything that can be cut.
That isn’t to say they won’t be cuts but I suspect a tax increase or 2 will be required to keep the books vaguely sensible
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I don't think the Remain campaign was shit - it was very good. Fear was what they had, and they deployed it well.
I also think the Leave campaign was rubbish.
I think without both of those factors, Leave's victory would have been far more emphatic.
Because Leave won it's forgotten now that the Leave campaign was fractious, poorly organised and crap. And I was in it.
I certainly didn't expect a win.
Yes, as someone who also campaigned for it, the amount of revisionism about how amazing the Leave campaign was is funny to me. There would be days where volunteers turned up but we had no instructions or material to give them because no one had sent anything to us. The reason Leave won is because people didn't like the EU or immigration and they saw it as a way of giving the elite a good kicking. It isn't really any more complicated than that. All of these people talking about how the Remain side needed to run a positive campaign are kidding themselves too, there is a tiny proportion of the UK public, then and now, who feel positively towards the EU and any campaign which tried to capture some positive sentiment or engender such would have ended with a Leave landslide. No, the Remain campaign did well to get to 48% and while there was a path to to a Remain vote before Dave's renegotiation, after that I think it became impossible.
I think that just about sums it up. The masses were given an all too rare opportunity to give the elite a kicking and for their vote actually to make a difference.
And they took it.
And it's the same story in France and the Netherlands when the public got their chance to give the elite a kicking over the EU constitution they turned around and told the EU and the elites to get fucked. I don't think the UK is some wild outlier as some try and paint it.
Sure, and one of the reasons for Brexit was that the elite refused to let us give them that kicking at any point dating back to Maastricht.
Well I mean this doesn't mean that we don't have a perfectly functioning democratic process (we do) just that the little people felt marginalised and left out because they don't understand that political process so thought they would kick the dog after their boss shouted at them one day at work.
I would put the number of people who know what they voted for at 0.005%.
Just got an email from an NHS trust (I sold them some software) advertising a webinar. They say it is ok for them to send the email because I am a "formal contact" since I am in the procurement system. Fair enough. All very GDPR.
But they didn't use BCC, so now I know the email addresses of the other thousand or so "formal contacts"...
Wonder if they will self-report to the ICO?
I emailed their Data Protection Officer, suggesting a refresher course for the offender.
I don't think the Remain campaign was shit - it was very good. Fear was what they had, and they deployed it well.
I also think the Leave campaign was rubbish.
I think without both of those factors, Leave's victory would have been far more emphatic.
Because Leave won it's forgotten now that the Leave campaign was fractious, poorly organised and crap. And I was in it.
I certainly didn't expect a win.
Yes, as someone who also campaigned for it, the amount of revisionism about how amazing the Leave campaign was is funny to me. There would be days where volunteers turned up but we had no instructions or material to give them because no one had sent anything to us. The reason Leave won is because people didn't like the EU or immigration and they saw it as a way of giving the elite a good kicking. It isn't really any more complicated than that. All of these people talking about how the Remain side needed to run a positive campaign are kidding themselves too, there is a tiny proportion of the UK public, then and now, who feel positively towards the EU and any campaign which tried to capture some positive sentiment or engender such would have ended with a Leave landslide. No, the Remain campaign did well to get to 48% and while there was a path to to a Remain vote before Dave's renegotiation, after that I think it became impossible.
For some weeks, I *was* the Leave campaign in Luton, and delivered about 6,000 leaflets. Others did take over nearer the day, to my relief.
When you inherit a debt legacy that's 100% of GDP, a 1% rise in global interest rates implies an eventual rise in future interest costs that's something around around 2% of total government spending. And our debt is relatively short term compared to many major economies, so that feeds through fairly quickly to spending forecasts.
That's completely wrong, in fact the reverse of the truth.
Our average sovereign debt maturity is more than 14 years, compared with 6 in the US and Germany, 8 in France and 7 in Italy.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I think the pay increases were unavoidable (heck I’ve argued they are the reason Rishi went early ).
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
I've read some of the excerpts from the big AI speech and it's complete nonsense.
This is the UK government version of startups adding AI to their company name just before going to VC pitch meetings. It's laughable that they're wasting time on this as a policy announcement, more and more I find the companies who shout loudest about how much they "do AI" are the ones who have the least knowledge on how to properly implement it, this government is going to be exactly the same. The biggest productivity gains from AI will be at the lowest levels, implementing it in customer service, using it for basic comms and triaging customer problems for departments. None of that is a big strategy but customers of government departments could see huge benefits from AI because they would have a much better initial experience than they currently get wading through the treacle that is government customer service.
AI is today's dead cat, as it gets dutifully covered, and isn't about tax, spend, borrow, gilts, NHS, social care, Trump, the economy, IHT, NI, etc.
It didn't work though, the story is now RR getting the dreaded vote of confidence. Tomorrow's media will all be speculation on who replaces her and which of the budget measures will need to be reversed to win back market confidence.
I suspect it’s more tax increases because I don’t think there is anything that can be cut.
That isn’t to say they won’t be cuts but I suspect a tax increase or 2 will be required to keep the books vaguely sensible
There seems to be a bit of murmuring going round in the press there will be cuts to the welfare budget.
Who thinks that Keir, Rach and Ange haven't asked their favourite LLMs how to run the country?
I listened to Keir's 'AI all the things' speech just there. It was fine as these things go. But I had to turn off the media questions as they were so epically dreadful. Nothing, zero, zilch about what he'd been talking about - at best general questions anyone would have asked, at worst just a talking point with the word 'AI' bolted onto it.
Presumably the usual story with "political" journalists totally ignorant of what was actually being talked about. How many times did we have to put up with that during Covid?
On the contrary, watching a bunch of arts degrees trying to understand concepts such as exponential growth and herd immunity, were some of the highlights of the pandemic!
Especially good was the “I’ve misunderstood something. So I’ve I have found a story that all the experts have missed.”
I don't think the Remain campaign was shit - it was very good. Fear was what they had, and they deployed it well.
I also think the Leave campaign was rubbish.
I think without both of those factors, Leave's victory would have been far more emphatic.
Because Leave won it's forgotten now that the Leave campaign was fractious, poorly organised and crap. And I was in it.
I certainly didn't expect a win.
Yes, as someone who also campaigned for it, the amount of revisionism about how amazing the Leave campaign was is funny to me. There would be days where volunteers turned up but we had no instructions or material to give them because no one had sent anything to us. The reason Leave won is because people didn't like the EU or immigration and they saw it as a way of giving the elite a good kicking. It isn't really any more complicated than that. All of these people talking about how the Remain side needed to run a positive campaign are kidding themselves too, there is a tiny proportion of the UK public, then and now, who feel positively towards the EU and any campaign which tried to capture some positive sentiment or engender such would have ended with a Leave landslide. No, the Remain campaign did well to get to 48% and while there was a path to to a Remain vote before Dave's renegotiation, after that I think it became impossible.
For some weeks, I *was* the Leave campaign in Luton, and delivered about 6,000 leaflets. Others did take over nearer the day, to my relief.
One of the things that I think the Leave campaign understood better than the Remain one was targeting and maximisation of likely turnout. My sense was that the Remain side were too used to fighting GE campaigns and FPTP but Leave understood that it was a national campaign meaning the tactics were focussed on the air war more than the ground war, hence the terrible disorganisation. Remain definitely concentrated on persuading one person at a time rather than the Leave approach of trying to get 50k votes at a time with big speeches etc... and being happy to convince 300 new voters from that kind of event.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I think the pay increases were unavoidable (heck I’ve argued they are the reason Rishi went early ).
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
No they weren't, you just let them strike until the union runs out of money and the bastards go back to work. You simply outlast them and break their resolve with anti-strike laws and union busting. If they don't like it then get a job in the private sector. Short term pain for long term gain.
I've read some of the excerpts from the big AI speech and it's complete nonsense.
This is the UK government version of startups adding AI to their company name just before going to VC pitch meetings. It's laughable that they're wasting time on this as a policy announcement, more and more I find the companies who shout loudest about how much they "do AI" are the ones who have the least knowledge on how to properly implement it, this government is going to be exactly the same. The biggest productivity gains from AI will be at the lowest levels, implementing it in customer service, using it for basic comms and triaging customer problems for departments. None of that is a big strategy but customers of government departments could see huge benefits from AI because they would have a much better initial experience than they currently get wading through the treacle that is government customer service.
AI is today's dead cat, as it gets dutifully covered, and isn't about tax, spend, borrow, gilts, NHS, social care, Trump, the economy, IHT, NI, etc.
It didn't work though, the story is now RR getting the dreaded vote of confidence. Tomorrow's media will all be speculation on who replaces her and which of the budget measures will need to be reversed to win back market confidence.
I suspect it’s more tax increases because I don’t think there is anything that can be cut.
That isn’t to say they won’t be cuts but I suspect a tax increase or 2 will be required to keep the books vaguely sensible
There seems to be a bit of murmuring going round in the press there will be cuts to the welfare budget.
Yep in disability benefits where they’ve been saying as much for 25 years and every year and every time the actual bill goes up - so I will believe it when I see it
I don't think the Remain campaign was shit - it was very good. Fear was what they had, and they deployed it well.
I also think the Leave campaign was rubbish.
I think without both of those factors, Leave's victory would have been far more emphatic.
Because Leave won it's forgotten now that the Leave campaign was fractious, poorly organised and crap. And I was in it.
I certainly didn't expect a win.
Yes, as someone who also campaigned for it, the amount of revisionism about how amazing the Leave campaign was is funny to me. There would be days where volunteers turned up but we had no instructions or material to give them because no one had sent anything to us. The reason Leave won is because people didn't like the EU or immigration and they saw it as a way of giving the elite a good kicking. It isn't really any more complicated than that. All of these people talking about how the Remain side needed to run a positive campaign are kidding themselves too, there is a tiny proportion of the UK public, then and now, who feel positively towards the EU and any campaign which tried to capture some positive sentiment or engender such would have ended with a Leave landslide. No, the Remain campaign did well to get to 48% and while there was a path to to a Remain vote before Dave's renegotiation, after that I think it became impossible.
For some weeks, I *was* the Leave campaign in Luton, and delivered about 6,000 leaflets. Others did take over nearer the day, to my relief.
One of the things that I think the Leave campaign understood better than the Remain one was targeting and maximisation of likely turnout. My sense was that the Remain side were too used to fighting GE campaigns and FPTP but Leave understood that it was a national campaign meaning the tactics were focussed on the air war more than the ground war, hence the terrible disorganisation. Remain definitely concentrated on persuading one person at a time rather than the Leave approach of trying to get 50k votes at a time with big speeches etc... and being happy to convince 300 new voters from that kind of event.
Agreed. And parts of Remain's 'air war' also seemed to be designed to annoy as many people who were waving as possible.
Dad was Remain until the 'Back of the queue' from Obama, for example.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
Along with Starmer, she also has zero understanding of market psychology
They got elected and said Wow things are really really bad, expect tax rises and more grisly stuff, but we won’t give you any more details for 5 months
Way to spook everyone, or what
Who is going to invest in Britain after that? Until you know more? Who is going to expand or hire or make a major purchase?
And then - then - when it came to the Big Ideas it turned out they had none
When you inherit a debt legacy that's 100% of GDP, a 1% rise in global interest rates implies an eventual rise in future interest costs that's something around around 2% of total government spending. And our debt is relatively short term compared to many major economies, so that feeds through fairly quickly to spending forecasts.
And Trump's presidency might see rates push higher still, as the US has rather more influence in the markets than does the UK Treasury.
However good or however crap the Chancellor is doesn't do much to change that.
Yeah
you spent most of the election arguing with me that cuts were impossible..
Not my recollection.
I said before the election that neither party's economic forecasts added up, and cuts or tax raises would be likely after the election.
I might well have said that saying so was politically impossible for them.
That's true. The best of the bad options would probably have been an Income Tax rise for the better off, but no politician could say that or even leave it up in the air. The Tories of the past are to blame for this - 'Labour's Tax Bombshell' means that all governments will have to find stealth taxes to see us through hard times for the foreseeable future.
A penny on income tax (call it a penny to save the NHS or something, that would have been the most savvy political move).
Yes there would have been a lot of sound and fury, but it would have applied to earned and unearned income so would have been perceived as fairer, and then if things were better in 2027/8 they could’ve cut it back as a “stability/growth dividend” or similar.
It was oft-mocked, but one of the better tactics from the coalition was the “we’re all in this together” narrative. There were plenty of ways that you could demonstrate that we were in fact not all in it together, but it harnessed this idea of national resolve, pulling things around by joint endeavour, everyone doing their bit. The country likes that Blitz spirit. See also the Covid lockdown.
“The Tories were crap, now let’s all do our bit to get the NHS out of the mire” would have been a decent line to take, no matter your view as to whether it would be the right policy.
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started. Plus not a penny more is going to be allocated to Wales as they don't need the votes.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
Along with Starmer, she also has zero understanding of market psychology
They got elected and said Wow things are really really bad, expect tax rises and more grisly stuff, but we won’t give you any more details for 5 months
Way to spook everyone, or what
Who is going to invest in Britain after that? Until you know more? Who is going to expand or hire or make a major purchase?
And then - then - when it came to the Big Ideas it turned out they had none
Catastrophic
Yup, and the worst part is that things weren't objectively bad, some public services were run down but nothing that a productivity or CapEx drive couldn't resolve. Inheriting a falling deficit, 2.5% annualised growth rate, falling inflation, rising real wages was something I don't they counted on and they were unable to change the script from their pre-election "Tories bad, economy bad" stuff and then they came out with a bunch of self-fulfilling negativity and now we're the sick man of Europe.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
Along with Starmer, she also has zero understanding of market psychology
They got elected and said Wow things are really really bad, expect tax rises and more grisly stuff, but we won’t give you any more details for 5 months
Way to spook everyone, or what
Who is going to invest in Britain after that? Until you know more? Who is going to expand or hire or make a major purchase?
And then - then - when it came to the Big Ideas it turned out they had none
Catastrophic
I wonder if Starmer thinks to himself, as he forces himself to go outside his comfort zone and do his AI boosterism routine, "I'm not as good at this as Boris was."
I don't think the Remain campaign was shit - it was very good. Fear was what they had, and they deployed it well.
I also think the Leave campaign was rubbish.
I think without both of those factors, Leave's victory would have been far more emphatic.
Because Leave won it's forgotten now that the Leave campaign was fractious, poorly organised and crap. And I was in it.
I certainly didn't expect a win.
Yes, as someone who also campaigned for it, the amount of revisionism about how amazing the Leave campaign was is funny to me. There would be days where volunteers turned up but we had no instructions or material to give them because no one had sent anything to us. The reason Leave won is because people didn't like the EU or immigration and they saw it as a way of giving the elite a good kicking. It isn't really any more complicated than that. All of these people talking about how the Remain side needed to run a positive campaign are kidding themselves too, there is a tiny proportion of the UK public, then and now, who feel positively towards the EU and any campaign which tried to capture some positive sentiment or engender such would have ended with a Leave landslide. No, the Remain campaign did well to get to 48% and while there was a path to to a Remain vote before Dave's renegotiation, after that I think it became impossible.
For some weeks, I *was* the Leave campaign in Luton, and delivered about 6,000 leaflets. Others did take over nearer the day, to my relief.
One of the things that I think the Leave campaign understood better than the Remain one was targeting and maximisation of likely turnout. My sense was that the Remain side were too used to fighting GE campaigns and FPTP but Leave understood that it was a national campaign meaning the tactics were focussed on the air war more than the ground war, hence the terrible disorganisation. Remain definitely concentrated on persuading one person at a time rather than the Leave approach of trying to get 50k votes at a time with big speeches etc... and being happy to convince 300 new voters from that kind of event.
Agreed. And parts of Remain's 'air war' also seemed to be designed to annoy as many people who were waving as possible.
Dad was Remain until the 'Back of the queue' from Obama, for example.
My own belief is that the Remain lost because no government had had the confidence to allow the British public a say on matters where other EU countries asked their electorates (e.g. Lisbon). Its not enough to say that we could change governments if ALL governments were in favour of being in the Common Market/the EU/ever closer union. Ask the people and make the case for why Lisbon is a GOOD thing for Britain.
Not doing so just looked shifty, as did Gordon Brown signing away from the cameras.
I voted Remain, but always had a huge Eurosceptic streak in me. I always believed in free trade, and a free trade that isn't being in a closed Bloc.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
Did she ignore or override Treasury advice, or was she set up to fail by civil servants who wanted her to fail?
For those wondering, Starship launch is now not before Wednesday.
For a brief moment I thought you were joining other far flung Yoons on tenterhooks about the first commercial trip of the MV Glen Sannox, BBC Shortbread & Ferry News has sent their chief news editor on this voyage; I foresee breaking headlines of no black pudding on the breakfast menu and toilet paper of insufficient softness.
Did we cover this?
"The carbon footprint of a long-delayed new "green" ferry will be far larger than the 31-year-old diesel ship that usually serves the route between the Scottish mainland and the island of Arran."
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started. Plus not a penny more is going to be allocated to Wales as they don't need the votes.
They don't need the votes?
If Reform do really well in Wales next year it will feed the "inevitability of PM Farage" story a lot more.
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started. Plus not a penny more is going to be allocated to Wales as they don't need the votes.
They don't need the votes?
If Reform do really well in Wales next year it will feed the "inevitability of PM Farage" story a lot more.
If the main unionist parties in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are all seen as right-wing, it could have an interesting effect on the English centre-left.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
Along with Starmer, she also has zero understanding of market psychology
They got elected and said Wow things are really really bad, expect tax rises and more grisly stuff, but we won’t give you any more details for 5 months
Way to spook everyone, or what
Who is going to invest in Britain after that? Until you know more? Who is going to expand or hire or make a major purchase?
And then - then - when it came to the Big Ideas it turned out they had none
Catastrophic
Seeing Reeves and Starmer continue to wheel out this message that their budget was all about growth (despite doing their best to throttle it since the GE) just makes you wonder what planet they’re on. Do they actually understand any of this? Do they think they just have to say it? It’s a message that just consistently fails to land, because the fundamentals behind it are just so shaky.
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started. Plus not a penny more is going to be allocated to Wales as they don't need the votes.
They don't need the votes?
If Reform do really well in Wales next year it will feed the "inevitability of PM Farage" story a lot more.
If Reform beat the Tories in Wales and Scotland I think it could be existential for the party.
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started. Plus not a penny more is going to be allocated to Wales as they don't need the votes.
Reform have an outside shot of winning the Senedd next year so that sounds dumb.
This is a government that you can tell was state educated. What a bunch of troglodytes.
State school pupils in England may have to drop GCSE Latin after funding pulled
DfE urged to delay ending funding of popular programme so that hundreds of students can complete their courses
State school pupils taking GCSE Latin may be forced to drop the subject or even have to teach themselves after the government ends funding for a popular programme that has increased the numbers learning Latin across England.
School leaders, scholars and authors are urging the Department for Education to offer a reprieve to the Latin excellenceprogramme, to enable hundreds of students to complete their GCSE courses and allow schools time to find additional support.
The DfE announced shortly before Christmas that it would end funding in February for the programme, which supports Latin lessons for more than 8,000 pupils at 40 non-selective state schools, as part of the government’s cost-cutting drive to stabilise public finances.
The cuts mean the programme will no longer be able to fund Latin teachers in schools from the end of next month, leaving some without qualified staff.
Tom Holland, the award-winning author and host of The Rest Is History podcast, said he supported continued funding for the programme, launched in 2021, arguing that Latin should not be abandoned to “posh ghettoes” within private schools.
It is a shameful vindictive decision. Deliberately harmful. And for what?
Daughter did Classical Civilisation at university. A mix of language, literature, history and culture. Absolutely loved it.
At the height of the financial crisis, my boss - a typically tough NY litigator - asked me what use this was. I looked at him, paused then asked him if he didn't think the study of hubris and nemesis were essential in our world. He laughed.
Why not give state school pupils the chance to learn about the roots of our civilisation. Education - proper education - is about more than training.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I think the pay increases were unavoidable (heck I’ve argued they are the reason Rishi went early ).
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
No they weren't, you just let them strike until the union runs out of money and the bastards go back to work. You simply outlast them and break their resolve with anti-strike laws and union busting. If they don't like it then get a job in the private sector. Short term pain for long term gain.
It's not 1926, or even 1984/5. Strikes aren't all-out for months, which is what your strategy requires. Unions have learned to game the system and strike in ways that cause maximum inconvenience to their employers for minium cost to themselves.
And for the umpteenth time, one of the reasons the pay review bodies made the recommendations they did was because people already were and are getting jobs in other sectors or countries. Not all of them, but enough to seriously screw up staffing.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I think the pay increases were unavoidable (heck I’ve argued they are the reason Rishi went early ).
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
No they weren't, you just let them strike until the union runs out of money and the bastards go back to work. You simply outlast them and break their resolve with anti-strike laws and union busting. If they don't like it then get a job in the private sector. Short term pain for long term gain.
It's not 1926, or even 1984/5. Strikes aren't all-out for months, which is what your strategy requires. Unions have learned to game the system and strike in ways that cause maximum inconvenience to their employers for minium cost to themselves.
And for the umpteenth time, one of the reasons the pay review bodies made the recommendations they did was because people already were and are getting jobs in other sectors or countries. Not all of them, but enough to seriously screw up staffing.
Some are. Go North East went out on a 13 week all out strike in 2023. Settled about half way through. Fuckers.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I think the pay increases were unavoidable (heck I’ve argued they are the reason Rishi went early ).
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
No they weren't, you just let them strike until the union runs out of money and the bastards go back to work. You simply outlast them and break their resolve with anti-strike laws and union busting. If they don't like it then get a job in the private sector. Short term pain for long term gain.
It's not 1926, or even 1984/5. Strikes aren't all-out for months, which is what your strategy requires. Unions have learned to game the system and strike in ways that cause maximum inconvenience to their employers for minium cost to themselves.
And for the umpteenth time, one of the reasons the pay review bodies made the recommendations they did was because people already were and are getting jobs in other sectors or countries. Not all of them, but enough to seriously screw up staffing.
This and the fact we had to release prisoners early due to lack of prison space, security cameras don't function at prisons etc. really suggests UK DOGE isn't the answer to our problems,
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I think the pay increases were unavoidable (heck I’ve argued they are the reason Rishi went early ).
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
No they weren't, you just let them strike until the union runs out of money and the bastards go back to work. You simply outlast them and break their resolve with anti-strike laws and union busting. If they don't like it then get a job in the private sector. Short term pain for long term gain.
It's not 1926, or even 1984/5. Strikes aren't all-out for months, which is what your strategy requires. Unions have learned to game the system and strike in ways that cause maximum inconvenience to their employers for minium cost to themselves.
And for the umpteenth time, one of the reasons the pay review bodies made the recommendations they did was because people already were and are getting jobs in other sectors or countries. Not all of them, but enough to seriously screw up staffing.
Some are. Go North East went out on a 13 week all out strike in 2023. Settled about half way through. Fuckers.
That’s because the Go North East drivers were paid so little they may as well have been on strike,
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started. Plus not a penny more is going to be allocated to Wales as they don't need the votes.
Reform have an outside shot of winning the Senedd next year so that sounds dumb.
Nobody will get allocated any money. There will be none to allocate.
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I think the pay increases were unavoidable (heck I’ve argued they are the reason Rishi went early ).
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
No they weren't, you just let them strike until the union runs out of money and the bastards go back to work. You simply outlast them and break their resolve with anti-strike laws and union busting. If they don't like it then get a job in the private sector. Short term pain for long term gain.
It's not 1926, or even 1984/5. Strikes aren't all-out for months, which is what your strategy requires. Unions have learned to game the system and strike in ways that cause maximum inconvenience to their employers for minium cost to themselves.
And for the umpteenth time, one of the reasons the pay review bodies made the recommendations they did was because people already were and are getting jobs in other sectors or countries. Not all of them, but enough to seriously screw up staffing.
Some are. Go North East went out on a 13 week all out strike in 2023. Settled about half way through. Fuckers.
That’s because the Go North East drivers were paid so little they may as well have been on strike,
I have my head camera every time I am out on my bike ready to report any close pass
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
This just depends on which stats you pick. For example, growth in 2022 was 4.8%, in 2023 was 0.3%. Growth has been bouncing all over the place, and actually reversed in Q4 '23.
On "hard won" confidence, gilts were only around 2% in mid 2022 and the Conservative administration couldn't bring them down from around 4% after the Truss episode. They stopped the economy sinking but abandoned ship under a heavy list.
There's no doubt that Labour haven't achieved much on the economy so far but the idea there were left with some sort of golden legacy is ridiculous. You undermine your own analysis with this stuff.
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started.
Got to say that increase tax piece by piece is a fairly stupid thing do get - just do it once and get all the pain out of the way
You'd have thought so.
That’s was the one bit it I didn’t get in the budget where were the changes to council tax.
I do wonder if one consequence of the election timing is that Labour simply weren’t able to get everything ready for the budget.
In which case it should have been held in November to provide the time required
They couldn’t delay any further, the wait was interminable and confidence-sapping as it was. They had a full summer to prepare, which they then spent in a doom loop briefing us about how terrible it was going to be.
Labour mps criticise Starmer for not giving Reeves his full support as they think it will spook the markets
Starmer is not very good at this is he
Not particularly.
The question, IIRC, was will she be the Chancellor at the next election.
The only way to close down speculation in response to a question like that is by giving one answer. Yes.
If, having given that answer, events intervene and she has to go, you say you are sad to lose her at that time but that you meant what you said when you backed her earlier. Unfortunately events overtook us but we have a shiny new chancellor now etc.
By not giving the answer “yes”, Starmer is either a) being crap at politics or b) he actually is thinking he’ll have to get rid of her imminently. Neither are great.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
I’m at the gym. Expect recitations from d’Annunzio in 80-90 minutes
You keep accidentally posting this stuff on a political betting blog instead of whatever "my holiday" blog you mean to post it to. And you were the one poster who got so animated last year about Biden's cogency!
Me ne frego
Wait! Are you really Melania Trump or the ghost of Mussolini?
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
Doesn’t matter, I am loving the Tories embracing the evil ECHR.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Gatwick ‘s application for a second runway should be dealt with (and approved) this year to be finished by 2030 (as the changes are moving it 12 meters to the left/right)
That removes some of the need for Heathrow but personally it should be built
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started.
Got to say that increase tax piece by piece is a fairly stupid thing do get - just do it once and get all the pain out of the way
Takes time to organise each rise. Can imagine its a bit like compound interest, to get the maximum return you have do each as soon as possible.
IMO fiscal policy is under explored in regards to bringing down inflation. The fairest way to extract money from the UK's current economy could well be targeted taxation instead of blanket interest rate rises: which do little to the already housed and comfortably retired.
Some ideas for Reeves:
>Additional levy on golf course memberships? >Higher rate holiday surcharge, the longer and further you go the greater the cost? >Compounding wine duty on bottles worth more than £20?
She got dealt a very duff hand and a difficult situation. I have sympathy for that. Nigel Lawson, one of the most intellectually competent and confident Chancellors in my lifetime, would have struggled.
But she has definitely made a very poor situation worse. A lot of this was semi-inevitable. She boxed herself in before the election. She boxed herself in further in the run up to the budget that was excessively delayed. She used the excuse of the £22bn "black hole" which was met with derision. She spent far too much of her money on trying to buy peace with the Unions.
The problem is that it is not going to get better. The increase of gilt yields has wiped out her headroom. Having repeatedly claimed that austerity is a matter of choice she will now have to accept it is a consequence of being in government and being responsible with taxpayers money. And Starmer does not strike me as someone you would want to be relying upon in difficult times.
I'm sorry this just isn't true. RR inherited a growing economy, she turned a 2.5% annualised growth rate into a 0% rate. She inherited falling inflation, she decided to put up employer's NI and forced businesses to push prices back up, she allowed Starmer to settle the public sector pay deals at exorbitant rates and ultimately she decided to borrow an additional £30bn per year and undermine Britain's hard won market confidence that Rish and Hunt had clawed back from the Truss disaster.
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
It's a strange sort who is prepared to die in a ditch over Latin teaching.
Ad munimenta, commilitones!
The same posters who are outraged that other people's children are incurring a huge debt to read for "Mickey Mouse" degrees".
So you are in favour of withdrawing teaching and effectively cancelling GCSEs that children have been studying for? As they head into the mocks and the final straight?
Why not end Latin teaching after the exams?
No, you like to put words on my page. Canning a programme in mid term is ridiculous. I also believe Latin should be available to be taught to those who want to learn Latin.
My point is not my inconsistency, which as you can see in the above paragraph is not inconsistent. My point was those crying loudest about the removal of Latin are happy to see the back of what they consider "Mickey Mouse" courses. Likewise I don't care if someone wants to complete a Masters degree on the hits of Madonna.
The actual problem with degrees is that for a large number of people, they need a degree to get the same job that was previously non-degree. And which has a low-to-non-existent premium over not doing the degree.
Meanwhile the government caps medical degrees (and associated training), and companies import graduates from other countries.
Now I am all for improving academic standards, in nursing for example, however I am not averse to more imaginative delivery. I don't see why Solicitors if they do wish can't go through the Articled Clerk route if they do desire, but equally those who want to attend University for three years despite the debt incurred should be allowed to go to University.
I am all for day and block release to complete a combined work and study degree course.
Law is an example of a now de facto graduate-only profession where the degree can be in any subject you like with a brief law course afterwards. One imagines they want new entrants to have attended those Oxbridge college dinners to learn which knife and fork to use.
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started.
Got to say that increase tax piece by piece is a fairly stupid thing do get - just do it once and get all the pain out of the way
Takes time to organise each rise. Can imagine its a bit like compound interest, to get the maximum return you have do each as soon as possible.
IMO fiscal policy is under explored in regards to bringing down inflation. The fairest way to extract money from the UK's current economy could well be targeted taxation instead of blanket interest rate rises: which do little to the already housed and comfortably retired.
Some ideas for Reeves:
>Additional levy on golf course memberships? >Higher rate holiday surcharge, the longer and further you go the greater the cost? >Compounding wine duty on bottles worth more than £20?
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
And if they succeed?
It would depend on what precisely the ruling was. It might be something where the govt can tweak the law or its implementation, in which case they'd do that. If there was a ruling that the ECHR forbids the general principle -- and that seems very, very unlikely -- then the govt would have a pickle on its hands.
But, as previously, this looks like a good way for Sinclairs to make some money, but is unlikely to change anything.
Gatwick ‘s application for a second runway should be dealt with (and approved) this year to be finished by 2030 (as the changes are moving it 12 meters to the left/right)
That removes some of the need for Heathrow but personally it should be built
If runway 2 for Gatwick Happens then that is great. I just worry these decisions get kicked into the long grass time and time again and there will be pushback from environmentalists and NIMBYs
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
Doesn’t matter, I am loving the Tories embracing the evil ECHR.
Rights are for proper people, silly, not the plebs
The next Trump Presidency is shaping up to be Alien vs Predator vs Dalek v Cylons v the Borg.
Whilst I would normally applaud, I don't like the underlying truth that these are just battles between Titans over how much and in what manner they are going to kick the shit out of us...
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started.
Got to say that increase tax piece by piece is a fairly stupid thing do get - just do it once and get all the pain out of the way
Takes time to organise each rise. Can imagine its a bit like compound interest, to get the maximum return you have do each as soon as possible.
IMO fiscal policy is under explored in regards to bringing down inflation. The fairest way to extract money from the UK's current economy could well be targeted taxation instead of blanket interest rate rises: which do little to the already housed and comfortably retired.
Some ideas for Reeves:
>Additional levy on golf course memberships? >Higher rate holiday surcharge, the longer and further you go the greater the cost? >Compounding wine duty on bottles worth more than £20?
Why just golf courses rather than all sports clubs
And do you really think that would raise anything other than pocket money when it comes to our crisis
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
And if they succeed?
It would depend on what precisely the ruling was. It might be something where the govt can tweak the law or its implementation, in which case they'd do that. If there was a ruling that the ECHR forbids the general principle -- and that seems very, very unlikely -- then the govt would have a pickle on its hands.
But, as previously, this looks like a good way for Sinclairs to make some money, but is unlikely to change anything.
4 years of living in Texas and I've come to the conclusion that the no state income tax thing is basically a scam. The property taxes are so high that they negate any savings. We are still paying as many taxes in Texas as we would in California. You save on gas I guess. https://x.com/JosephKahn/status/1878581878984528080
Probably more sensible that CA's Prop 13, which irredeemably screwed up their system of property taxation forty years ago.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
I spoke to a friend the other day whose sibling is a senior Lab advisor (so impeccable and credible source, obvs).
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started.
Got to say that increase tax piece by piece is a fairly stupid thing do get - just do it once and get all the pain out of the way
Takes time to organise each rise. Can imagine its a bit like compound interest, to get the maximum return you have do each as soon as possible.
IMO fiscal policy is under explored in regards to bringing down inflation. The fairest way to extract money from the UK's current economy could well be targeted taxation instead of blanket interest rate rises: which do little to the already housed and comfortably retired.
Some ideas for Reeves:
>Additional levy on golf course memberships? >Higher rate holiday surcharge, the longer and further you go the greater the cost? >Compounding wine duty on bottles worth more than £20?
Why just golf courses rather than all sports clubs
And do you really think that would raise anything other than pocket money when it comes to our crisis
I don't think @MightyAlex was being entirely serious...
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
And if they succeed?
It would depend on what precisely the ruling was. It might be something where the govt can tweak the law or its implementation, in which case they'd do that. If there was a ruling that the ECHR forbids the general principle -- and that seems very, very unlikely -- then the govt would have a pickle on its hands.
But, as previously, this looks like a good way for Sinclairs to make some money, but is unlikely to change anything.
You hope !!!!!
I voted LibDem. LibDem policy opposed VAT on school fees.
The next Trump Presidency is shaping up to be Alien vs Predator vs Dalek v Cylons v the Borg.
It always was going to be. Let's hope that occupies enough of their time that they then just ignore the rest of us.
As I have said before I am hoping that the Trump presidency is going to be a lot of noise and no action other than all of us getting annoyed at everything he says, but he ends up not being able to follow through on any of it.
It's a strange sort who is prepared to die in a ditch over Latin teaching.
Ad munimenta, commilitones!
The same posters who are outraged that other people's children are incurring a huge debt to read for "Mickey Mouse" degrees".
So you are in favour of withdrawing teaching and effectively cancelling GCSEs that children have been studying for? As they head into the mocks and the final straight?
Why not end Latin teaching after the exams?
No, you like to put words on my page. Canning a programme in mid term is ridiculous. I also believe Latin should be available to be taught to those who want to learn Latin.
My point is not my inconsistency, which as you can see in the above paragraph is not inconsistent. My point was those crying loudest about the removal of Latin are happy to see the back of what they consider "Mickey Mouse" courses. Likewise I don't care if someone wants to complete a Masters degree on the hits of Madonna.
The actual problem with degrees is that for a large number of people, they need a degree to get the same job that was previously non-degree. And which has a low-to-non-existent premium over not doing the degree.
Meanwhile the government caps medical degrees (and associated training), and companies import graduates from other countries.
Now I am all for improving academic standards, in nursing for example, however I am not averse to more imaginative delivery. I don't see why Solicitors if they do wish can't go through the Articled Clerk route if they do desire, but equally those who want to attend University for three years despite the debt incurred should be allowed to go to University.
I am all for day and block release to complete a combined work and study degree course.
Law is an example of a now de facto graduate-only profession where the degree can be in any subject you like with a brief law course afterwards. One imagines they want new entrants to have attended those Oxbridge college dinners to learn which knife and fork to use.
Ten-twenty years ago Channel 4(?) told the story of a working class woman who, thru studying at night, gained a law degree, but who failed when nobody would give her a pupillage (right word). Cases like this are simply ignored.
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
Several legal analysts have looked at these sorts of challenges and pronounced them highly unlikely to succeed. The policy already does not apply to SEND pupils.
There may be a difference between the policy not applying to SEND pupils and the policy applying to schools attended by SEND pupils. If the school has to close because of the tax, not having levied the tax on SEND pupils doesn't help.
The next Trump Presidency is shaping up to be Alien vs Predator vs Dalek v Cylons v the Borg.
It always was going to be. Let's hope that occupies enough of their time that they then just ignore the rest of us.
As I have said before I am hoping that the Trump presidency is going to be a lot of noise and no action other than all of us getting annoyed at everything he says, but he ends up not being able to follow through on any of it.
Rather like Trump1 then. I'd bite your hand off because I think that's optimistic this time.
Comments
Who still uses BCC emails, rather than having a marketing system send individual messages?
It would damage him enormously. Losing a chancellor always does - and in these circumstances?
For that reason alone he will do his best to keep her
That isn’t to say they won’t be cuts but I suspect a tax increase or 2 will be required to keep the books vaguely sensible
You're letting her and Labour off the hook and I don't understand why. If she had done precisely zero we'd still have a falling deficit relative to GDP and our debt yields would still be tracking lower than the US because we'd have a much lower risk premium than a country that is looking to increase borrowing rather than reduce it.
This crisis that is unfolding is entirely of Labour's making and RR is the prime culprit, it's clear that she doesn't understand the practical effects of economic policy, though she may understand the theory.
I would put the number of people who know what they voted for at 0.005%.
Lucky this is suppliers, not patients.
The employer NI increase could have worked but it was always a risk and the allowance cut made it a tax on employment.
I’ve said multiple times RR should have reversed the Ni cut by some means or other. Keeping the winter fuel allowance and putting 3p on income tax was my approach. Add 1.2% to employer Ni without the allowance change and that would have been enough
See Prof. Peston FRS, DipSHit etc
Dad was Remain until the 'Back of the queue' from Obama, for example.
They got elected and said Wow things are really really bad, expect tax rises and more grisly stuff, but we won’t give you any more details for 5 months
Way to spook everyone, or what
Who is going to invest in Britain after that? Until you know more? Who is going to expand or hire or make a major purchase?
And then - then - when it came to the Big Ideas it turned out they had none
Catastrophic
Yes there would have been a lot of sound and fury, but it would have applied to earned and unearned income so would have been perceived as fairer, and then if things were better in 2027/8 they could’ve cut it back as a “stability/growth dividend” or similar.
It was oft-mocked, but one of the better tactics from the coalition was the “we’re all in this together” narrative. There were plenty of ways that you could demonstrate that we were in fact not all in it together, but it harnessed this idea of national resolve, pulling things around by joint endeavour, everyone doing their bit. The country likes that Blitz spirit. See also the Covid lockdown.
“The Tories were crap, now let’s all do our bit to get the NHS out of the mire” would have been a decent line to take, no matter your view as to whether it would be the right policy.
The friend said that there is more to come, tax-wise, and that they are only just getting started. Plus not a penny more is going to be allocated to Wales as they don't need the votes.
Not doing so just looked shifty, as did Gordon Brown signing away from the cameras.
I voted Remain, but always had a huge Eurosceptic streak in me. I always believed in free trade, and a free trade that isn't being in a closed Bloc.
If Reform do really well in Wales next year it will feed the "inevitability of PM Farage" story a lot more.
Daughter did Classical Civilisation at university. A mix of language, literature, history and culture. Absolutely loved it.
At the height of the financial crisis, my boss - a typically tough NY litigator - asked me what use this was. I looked at him, paused then asked him if he didn't think the study of hubris and nemesis were essential in our world. He laughed.
Why not give state school pupils the chance to learn about the roots of our civilisation. Education - proper education - is about more than training.
And for the umpteenth time, one of the reasons the pay review bodies made the recommendations they did was because people already were and are getting jobs in other sectors or countries. Not all of them, but enough to seriously screw up staffing.
Won't be great for the country, but it is what it is.
I have my head camera every time I am out on my bike ready to report any close pass
I do wonder if one consequence of the election timing is that Labour simply weren’t able to get everything ready for the budget.
In which case it should have been held in November to provide the time required
On "hard won" confidence, gilts were only around 2% in mid 2022 and the Conservative administration couldn't bring them down from around 4% after the Truss episode. They stopped the economy sinking but abandoned ship under a heavy list.
There's no doubt that Labour haven't achieved much on the economy so far but the idea there were left with some sort of golden legacy is ridiculous. You undermine your own analysis with this stuff.
Starmer is not very good at this is he
The question, IIRC, was will she be the Chancellor at the next election.
The only way to close down speculation in response to a question like that is by giving one answer. Yes.
If, having given that answer, events intervene and she has to go, you say you are sad to lose her at that time but that you meant what you said when you backed her earlier. Unfortunately events overtook us but we have a shiny new chancellor now etc.
By not giving the answer “yes”, Starmer is either a) being crap at politics or b) he actually is thinking he’ll have to get rid of her imminently. Neither are great.
Steve Bannon says he will ‘take down’ the ‘truly evil’ Elon Musk
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/5081681-steve-bannon-says-he-will-take-down-the-truly-evil-elon-musk/
Rachel Reeves is facing a High Court legal challenge over Labour’s private school VAT raid on vulnerable children.
Three mothers have lodged a claim against the Chancellor, arguing the 20pc levy on school fees discriminates against pupils with special education needs (Send), as well as single mothers.
The women, who are being represented by law firm Sinclairs, have so far raised £185,000 in their fight to prove the Government has breached the European Convention of Human Rights.
Lawyers hope that if the court finds in their favour, it would force the Government to abandon its controversial education tax, as it would significantly undermine how much money the policy – forecast to bring in £1.5bn – will raise.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/reeves-high-court-harmful-impact-vat-raid/
Heathrow doomed to stagnation as runways fill up
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/13/heathrow-doomed-to-stagnation-as-runways-fill-up/
This is dangerous territory for Reeves, the Country, and even Starmer himself
That removes some of the need for Heathrow but personally it should be built
IMO fiscal policy is under explored in regards to bringing down inflation. The fairest way to extract money from the UK's current economy could well be targeted taxation instead of blanket interest rate rises: which do little to the already housed and comfortably retired.
Some ideas for Reeves:
>Additional levy on golf course memberships?
>Higher rate holiday surcharge, the longer and further you go the greater the cost?
>Compounding wine duty on bottles worth more than £20?
hide in the toilets
resign
But, as previously, this looks like a good way for Sinclairs to make some money, but is unlikely to change anything.
And do you really think that would raise anything other than pocket money when it comes to our crisis
NEW THREAD
https://x.com/JosephKahn/status/1878581878984528080
Probably more sensible that CA's Prop 13, which irredeemably screwed up their system of property taxation forty years ago.
As I have said before I am hoping that the Trump presidency is going to be a lot of noise and no action other than all of us getting annoyed at everything he says, but he ends up not being able to follow through on any of it.
Good evening, everyone.