Remember this - the Whitehall machine is broken. Whatever ideas Labour had have been crushed by the Treasury. Though the “Rachael from Accounts” jibe is outrageously misogynistic, she has been captured and broken by economic orthodoxy. Reform offering up people who basically say “this is stupidity, here’s what we should do” is not the negative you may think.
Which brings us back to Danny Fink's column
Voters think the Government is not working for them
They will vote for people promising to smash it
Unfortunately that's mob mentality. The same people who vote for trashing the system are the ones who try and burn down a hotel housing migrants
Of course in the aftermath they also want the fire brigade, ambulances and hospitals...
This is not quite right. People are not moving to Reform in order to smash stuff (though of course it might). The mass of voters have no interest in revolution. People like a quiet life. They neither know nor care how Whitehall works. Nor should they, it isn't their job. They want social democracy delivered with boring competence, and for many years now that has not been achieved. Reform's promise in fact is to do just that.
Note with care Farage distancing himself from trouble makers. Though he needs to go further.
And this is exactly where Labour had the opportunity and are fluffing it.
People are not stupid. They know things aren’t working the way they want or need them to. Some of this is deeply structural and relates to the way we have been governed at least since the 1980s and in some cases far earlier. Attlee, Thatcher and Blair, who are probably the biggest architects of our current system, did much right but a lot of their ideas are now outdated in the circumstances we find ourselves in, 25 years into the 21st Century.
Unfortunately our political classes continue to maintain that a lot of these structures and models are sacred cows and untouchable. The problem is that by delaying reform the eventual solutions to “fix” the problems will become much more extreme.
The current situation is very much like that in 1945 or 1979, in that the country is in a hole and things need to radically change to improve the situation.
Sh!t, I just realised that 1945 to 1979 is 34 years, and 1979 to 2025 is 46 years.
We're closer to the 22nd century than the end of WWII.
Anyway, I'm off. Have a nice day, everyone.
Madonna's "(Get) Into The Groove" is 40 years old...
We are further from Get Into The Groove than Get Into The Groove was from Perry Como's "Some Enchanted Evening".
“Into The Groove” is now equidistant between today and “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn!
Okay this gets scary quickly.
The Wrath of Khan is closer to the start of the WWII than today.
Star Wars: A New Hope is closer to the Wall Street crash than today.
It’s no fun being a sci-fi geek from the 80s.
The film Forbidden Planet is closer to the death of Queen Victoria, than it is to us.
Well it is essentially a Shakespeare adaptation.
The Timeless Dr Who Classic, Planet of Evil, borrowed heavily from The Forbidden Planet.
...Speaking of overlooked classic episodes, I saw "Stones of Blood" the other day, and (if you can overlook the naff FX) it holds up well.
(I'm trying to spread the rumour that the 2025 Xmas throwback classic will be "The Claws Of Axos in Black and White")
IIRC the original UK Gold screening was in black and white. Certainly some of the first copies to get out to fans were.
I do like Stones of Blood and it was one of the last Dr Who stories to show a character Smoking. De Vries smokes a cigarette.
It's quite a fun story like that whole season. Vivian Fay is quite an interesting character.
I can forgive naff FX far more than I can forgive poor acting or scripting.
Last one I watched was the coloured War Games which I think worked rather well and the colour work very good.
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
You don't even need that. The prices spike we've all just experienced pressed the pensions button twice:
In 2022 due to inflation. In 2023 due to wages (which took a while to respond).
Which is the real (but fiddly to explain) reason why clawing back the winter fuel payment was necessary and now was roughly the right technocratic time to do it.
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
It does, and I agree your point, but to make another one against it.
If the pension goes up purely and simply by inflation every year (so no link to average earnings) then in the very long run pensioners who rely on it will fall into poverty.
You can see that by taking say the average wage in 1960 and just uplifting it for inflation and see what that looks like now. It'll be under the poverty line, I bet.
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
I entirely get the point, which can arguably be made more simply than you have done. Given basic pension increases at least as much (and often more) than average earnings year to year, simple maths means in the very long term it'll outstrip average earnings.
So the triple lock will have to be broken eventually. Although eventually doesn't necessarily mean over the next four years. The basic state pension is better than it was in the UK, but it's hardly lavish. There's a totally reasonable debate to be had about how far pensioners can or should be insulated from economic challenges facing the UK. But some of the tone of the debate tends towards the idea that slightly younger people are being shafted by millions of avaricious wrinklies, and that isn't very realistic.
Serious question: why don't we just sell the Chagos Islands to the highest bidder? "For Sale: one US air base with attached island and inhabitants" We should be able to get a couple of billion, surely?
Great idea. Bidding war ensues between USA and China pushing up the price to the stratosphere.
Trump will understand. "Transactional".
10% cut to all Chagossians. Sorted!
The Chagos "deal" gets weirder. Badenoch mentioned it today in PMQs - why are we giving away territory and paying to do it (yes yes, of course, Truss and Cleverley etc). So she neatly cued up Starmer to finally explain why we must do such a terrible deal, literally paying to be robbed blind, and his best reason was "it was a Tory policy"
And yet we know that Labour will ditch perfectly nice policies (rewilding beavers in England) simply for being tainted by the Tory legacy
So WTAF? Why? Why the terrible deal, why the terrible hurry?
There are now quite lurid speculations on TwiX that certain parties will personally gain, financially, from this calamity, if it is enacted. I was tempted to dismiss them, but in the absence of any better explanation...
Currys to offshore more jobs to India as a response to the additional costs of employment imposed by the govt in the budget, or so they claim.
I thought businesses were just going to pay for this out of profits !!!!
"The retailer has previously warned that it faces £30m in extra costs as a result of the Chancellor’s October Budget, at which she announced a £25bn National Insurance (NI) raid on employers, as well as a 6.7pc increase in the minimum wage.
Mr Baldock said that while it was important to invest in staff pay, he warned that some of the new costs announced by Ms Reeves would be harmful to jobs.
“The National Insurance tax is a tax on jobs that doesn’t benefit colleagues at all and actually depresses hiring and boosts offshoring and automation.
“We don’t want to employ fewer people in the UK. We don’t want to depress hiring in the UK. We want to employ more people. We want to be in the box seat for powering growth in this country. We want to invest more, hire more, and help the economy grow faster. What we’re asking for is the environment to allow us to do that.”"
Completed online application for my son for his new passport on evening of 7th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Sent old passport back on 8th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Received new passport in the post yesterday (14th).
It can be done - efficient, using technology. Impressed. Looking at their stats, average waiting time has been under 10 days for over a year now.
The passport office has always been great in my experience.
Handing out passports has been a government priority for a while.
Rightly so. People who want Stalag17 should go to North Korea. Oh wait, they can't.
Serious question: why don't we just sell the Chagos Islands to the highest bidder? "For Sale: one US air base with attached island and inhabitants" We should be able to get a couple of billion, surely?
Great idea. Bidding war ensues between USA and China pushing up the price to the stratosphere.
Trump will understand. "Transactional".
10% cut to all Chagossians. Sorted!
The Chagos "deal" gets weirder. Badenoch mentioned it today in PMQs - why are we giving away territory and paying to do it (yes yes, of course, Truss and Cleverley etc). So she neatly cued up Starmer to finally explain why we must do such a terrible deal, literally paying to be robbed blind, and his best reason was "it was a Tory policy"
And yet we know that Labour will ditch perfectly nice policies (rewilding beavers in England) simply for being tainted by the Tory legacy
So WTAF? Why? Why the terrible deal, why the terrible hurry?
There are now quite lurid speculations on TwiX that certain parties will personally gain, financially, from this calamity, if it is enacted. I was tempted to dismiss them, but in the absence of any better explanation...
I'm still hopeful the deal will somehow be stymied at the last moment.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
Free speech is the absence of a negative - i.e. it means you are not persecuted for making your point - not that you have the right to do it when and where wherever you like and disrupt others doing the same or going about their lawful business.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
You just don't get it.
You never will.
I get that you do not want to engage with difficult conversations and would prefer everything to be black and white. I also get that black and white is a very compelling political argument. But it does not solve deep-seated economic challenges.
I engage in difficult conversations on here all the time, but you won't brook anything that goes against your world view - which is that you only want immigration to be about economic benefits.
No, I want immigration to be discussed honestly.
A substantial reduction to immigration levels will have an adverse effect on our economy in multiple ways. I don't think we can afford for that to happen given where our economy is currently.
A substantial reduction from a 10 year average or 2 year average as those are very different?
Well, exactly. Immigration numbers are going to come down significantly over the next year. Is that enough? If not, why not and what will give?
Putting your two comments together, should the government be trying to increase immigration to boost the economy or should they be happy that immigration will come down?
I wonder how the people who would currently support broadly a 'No Immigration' policy would be impacted by it, if it was actually implemented?
How many would benefit by wages rising to a decent level for all the minimum wage jobs that currently rely on immigrants to fill vacancies? A net positive for working people in the lower-paid end of the job market.
And how many would be squealing at the tax rises needed to pay for social care and health costs, or (alternatively) growth in NHS waiting lists and the inability to see a GP? Or services in general because wages have risen? I expect a lot of the 55+ cohort supporting Reform would be far from happy.
I expect the comfortably off middle classes could manage to find their way to the local takeaway once more instead of using Deliveroo...
Conclusion - Labour should adopt zero immigration as it will benefit their natural support and punish the Reform vote most. They won't though,
If Reform got in, it would kill them stone dead. If elected, they won't do it either.
When you refer to a no immigration policy, is that in absolute or net terms as those are two completely different things?
Eg you could have a policy of net no migration, which I believe was Reform's policy last time, which would still entail over a hundred thousand people per year immigrating to net against those who emigrate.
Or you could have a policy of no immigration which if you don't prevent emigration would mean net emigration over 100k per annum.
I wasn't particularly specifying (not my policy, I was just thinking out loud). I can't speak for them but I imagine many of the 'No Immigration' types mean absolutely none at all. But I suspect no net immigration would be more than enough to have the effects I've suggested.
Completed online application for my son for his new passport on evening of 7th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Sent old passport back on 8th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Received new passport in the post yesterday (14th).
It can be done - efficient, using technology. Impressed. Looking at their stats, average waiting time has been under 10 days for over a year now.
That's impressive - even in the 'good old days' I remember being told to allow 3 months to be sure your new passport arrived in time!
Completed online application for my son for his new passport on evening of 7th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Sent old passport back on 8th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Received new passport in the post yesterday (14th).
It can be done - efficient, using technology. Impressed. Looking at their stats, average waiting time has been under 10 days for over a year now.
The passport office has always been great in my experience.
In 2022, it could be up to a month on average. From 2020 onwards it never averaged less than 10 days until autumn 2023. It has been <10 days ever since. As Eek says, they have found ways of improving.
Completed online application for my son for his new passport on evening of 7th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Sent old passport back on 8th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Received new passport in the post yesterday (14th).
It can be done - efficient, using technology. Impressed. Looking at their stats, average waiting time has been under 10 days for over a year now.
That's impressive - even in the 'good old days' I remember being told to allow 3 months to be sure your new passport arrived in time!
It’s amazing how a load of sh!tty headlines, and insurance companies arguing with government about liability for cancellations, can suddenly spur government departments to do what they’re supposed to do.
Completed online application for my son for his new passport on evening of 7th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Sent old passport back on 8th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Received new passport in the post yesterday (14th).
It can be done - efficient, using technology. Impressed. Looking at their stats, average waiting time has been under 10 days for over a year now.
That's impressive - even in the 'good old days' I remember being told to allow 3 months to be sure your new passport arrived in time!
UKPO was amazingly efficient for me, as well. I applied for a 2nd passport to replace my old 2nd passport (I have 2 passports due to my job). This was complicated by the fact my reason for applying for a new passport was because my prior one was full of stamps, it legally still had 5 years to run
I expected major hassles, and delay, instead I got a personal phone call from a friendly intelligent Scotch lady within 72 hours of my application, to clarify my needs, and the passport arrived a few days later. Total 8 days? 9?
Superb
Whatever they are doing at the UKPO, read across for every single HMG department
@RossKempsell Labour's Chagos sellout is collapsing - Mauritius refuses to sign after Cabinet meeting this morning, sending negotiators back to London, presumably to bid up the price to UK taxpayers even more
The attitude of the Mauritius government is simply weird. They won't get a better deal from Trump. Sometimes, people just overplay their hand totally,
Maybe they don't want the islands, but they want to have the grievance of not having the islands.
I feel that a few people who campaigned for Brexit might have been happier with the vote going marginally the other way.
Serious question: why don't we just sell the Chagos Islands to the highest bidder? "For Sale: one US air base with attached island and inhabitants" We should be able to get a couple of billion, surely?
Great idea. Bidding war ensues between USA and China pushing up the price to the stratosphere.
Trump will understand. "Transactional".
10% cut to all Chagossians. Sorted!
The Chagos "deal" gets weirder. Badenoch mentioned it today in PMQs - why are we giving away territory and paying to do it (yes yes, of course, Truss and Cleverley etc). So she neatly cued up Starmer to finally explain why we must do such a terrible deal, literally paying to be robbed blind, and his best reason was "it was a Tory policy"
And yet we know that Labour will ditch perfectly nice policies (rewilding beavers in England) simply for being tainted by the Tory legacy
So WTAF? Why? Why the terrible deal, why the terrible hurry?
There are now quite lurid speculations on TwiX that certain parties will personally gain, financially, from this calamity, if it is enacted. I was tempted to dismiss them, but in the absence of any better explanation...
Ivor Caplin is still tweeting. Shouldn’t someone be performing an intervention? Nsfw in case anyone can be arsed looking at his tweets.
I had unfortunately seen. I've also seen that he still appears to have a parliamentary pass. He shouldn't be allowed anywhere near there and shouldn't have been for some time.
Maybe his good friend, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, could stage the intervention?
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
If we look at the actual numbers, it has added perhaps 8-9% in real terms in nearly 15 years.
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
It does, and I agree your point, but to make another one against it.
If the pension goes up purely and simply by inflation every year (so no link to average earnings) then in the very long run pensioners who rely on it will fall into poverty.
You can see that by taking say the average wage in 1960 and just uplifting it for inflation and see what that looks like now. It'll be under the poverty line, I bet.
You can still adjust upward by the higher of earnings, prices, and 2.5% compounded. It would still be 'triple locked'. It is surely not beyond the wit of a gov't department to just plot the three on a graph and keep the pension at the highest of the three lines ?
In my example that'd give a pension of £10,769 after three years. It'd still be up by 7.7% in real terms. It is the long term ratchet effect which is the issue imo.
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
You don't even need that. The prices spike we've all just experienced pressed the pensions button twice:
In 2022 due to inflation. In 2023 due to wages (which took a while to respond).
Which is the real (but fiddly to explain) reason why clawing back the winter fuel payment was necessary and now was roughly the right technocratic time to do it.
Exaggeration hardly cuts it , next he will be explaining how if he stiches 3 pairs of bollox to his granny he will have 3 granddad's. I have seen some mince in my time but that one takes the biscuit.
Hurrah, at work I won’t have self censor anymore, I can be my true unrestrained self.
Total and utter freedom of speech!
I reckon out of all that previously self-censored thought and opinion that will now fizz around the internet, the workplace and the home will come the secret of intergalactic travel and a cure for cancer.
Currys to offshore more jobs to India as a response to the additional costs of employment imposed by the govt in the budget, or so they claim.
I thought businesses were just going to pay for this out of profits !!!!
"The retailer has previously warned that it faces £30m in extra costs as a result of the Chancellor’s October Budget, at which she announced a £25bn National Insurance (NI) raid on employers, as well as a 6.7pc increase in the minimum wage.
Mr Baldock said that while it was important to invest in staff pay, he warned that some of the new costs announced by Ms Reeves would be harmful to jobs.
“The National Insurance tax is a tax on jobs that doesn’t benefit colleagues at all and actually depresses hiring and boosts offshoring and automation.
“We don’t want to employ fewer people in the UK. We don’t want to depress hiring in the UK. We want to employ more people. We want to be in the box seat for powering growth in this country. We want to invest more, hire more, and help the economy grow faster. What we’re asking for is the environment to allow us to do that.”"
@RossKempsell Labour's Chagos sellout is collapsing - Mauritius refuses to sign after Cabinet meeting this morning, sending negotiators back to London, presumably to bid up the price to UK taxpayers even more
The mad rush, especially in the US, to sign inviolable contracts and treaties before Monday lunchtime in Washington is scary to watch.
Has there ever before been so many US regulations and Executive Orders issued in the last week or two of a Presidency before? It’s doubly concerning when we know that the big man isn’t entirely all with it at the moment, so who’s actually writing all this stuff, and hoping to ram it all through before the change of administration?
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary nominee Pate Hesgeth was running rings around the Senate Defence Committee yesterday, a bunch of old people who had very little military experience between them.
What was that, Captain Mainwaring?
A quick check reveals that nearly half of the Armed Services Committee are veterans, including several women, many at senior level.
(Admittedly dramatic) Example: Lieutenant Colonel Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs in Iraq when she was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, and it was hit by an RPG, in 2004. Military career from 1990-2014.
Plus those who are eg ex-CIA and ex-DOD.
I think the USA has Veterans in its establishment in a way beyond our (including my) ken in the UK. Thee are nearly 20 million veterans.
I listened to part of it, and Pete Hegseth was sloping shoulders and generating word salads like a Post Office Executive. I think restraints on questions were more likely generated by a Republican obeissance-to-Trump factor.
@RossKempsell Labour's Chagos sellout is collapsing - Mauritius refuses to sign after Cabinet meeting this morning, sending negotiators back to London, presumably to bid up the price to UK taxpayers even more
The attitude of the Mauritius government is simply weird. They won't get a better deal from Trump. Sometimes, people just overplay their hand totally,
Maybe they don't want the islands, but they want to have the grievance of not having the islands.
I feel that a few people who campaigned for Brexit might have been happier with the vote going marginally the other way.
It's pretty obvious Starmer is trying to engineer a Falklands crisis. He's feigned vulnerability, Mauritius have taken the bait, 5D chess, THE IRON KNIGHT fights for the RED-FOOTED BOOBY.
Given the absence of any other explanation, this has to be it.
Watching PMQs for the first time in ages (since I'm not swimming this lunchtime...)
The other day I criticised SKS over the way he speaks. He's a bit better at this PMQs (though that's a very low hurdle to cross), but Badenoch is awful in a different way. Her voice is more appealing, but she makes too many wordslips, and the content of what she says is absolutely meh. Worse, she cannot think on her feet.
It really is two drunken amateurs slugging it out at the bar.
It’s a bit like two people talking to each other but having separate conversations. High performance art.
Badenoch has surprised me because one of the things I thought she would be good at, if nothing else, was PMQs. Instead she stumbles around a set of scripted topics/statements as if she’s just teeing things up for Starmer to knock down. She is better when she focuses on one topic, like last week, but it’s far from good even then.
The only reason people aren’t even harder on her is Starmer isn’t that great either. If she was facing someone like Blair she’d be mortifyingly embarrassing.
By way of boasting - not my normal style, I know - I just want to point out that I said one of the upsides of a Trump presidency might be a deal in Gaza, as well as Ukraine. Because Trump is an ice-breaker and a gamechanger, by definition. For good or ill (often ill) he wants to do things very differently, and sees everything from a perspective not available to Washington insiders. eg he's much less likely to genuflect to the pro-Israel lobbyists in DC
Lo and behold, as Trump arrives, a ceasefire looms in Gaza. If Biden/Harris had won. this would likely not be happening
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
I entirely get the point, which can arguably be made more simply than you have done. Given basic pension increases at least as much (and often more) than average earnings year to year, simple maths means in the very long term it'll outstrip average earnings.
So the triple lock will have to be broken eventually. Although eventually doesn't necessarily mean over the next four years. The basic state pension is better than it was in the UK, but it's hardly lavish. There's a totally reasonable debate to be had about how far pensioners can or should be insulated from economic challenges facing the UK. But some of the tone of the debate tends towards the idea that slightly younger people are being shafted by millions of avaricious wrinklies, and that isn't very realistic.
Greed by people , on here who are loaded . Pity help their grandparents ,these bloodsuckers will be robbing them blind first opportunity they get.
@RossKempsell Labour's Chagos sellout is collapsing - Mauritius refuses to sign after Cabinet meeting this morning, sending negotiators back to London, presumably to bid up the price to UK taxpayers even more
The mad rush, especially in the US, to sign inviolable contracts and treaties before Monday lunchtime in Washington is scary to watch.
Has there ever before been so many US regulations and Executive Orders issued in the last week or two of a Presidency before? It’s doubly concerning when we know that the big man isn’t entirely all with it at the moment, so who’s actually writing all this stuff, and hoping to ram it all through before the change of administration?
Their system is different from ours. The 'big man who isn't entirely all with it' comes in next week.
Serious question: why don't we just sell the Chagos Islands to the highest bidder? "For Sale: one US air base with attached island and inhabitants" We should be able to get a couple of billion, surely?
Great idea. Bidding war ensues between USA and China pushing up the price to the stratosphere.
Trump will understand. "Transactional".
10% cut to all Chagossians. Sorted!
The Chagos "deal" gets weirder. Badenoch mentioned it today in PMQs - why are we giving away territory and paying to do it (yes yes, of course, Truss and Cleverley etc). So she neatly cued up Starmer to finally explain why we must do such a terrible deal, literally paying to be robbed blind, and his best reason was "it was a Tory policy"
And yet we know that Labour will ditch perfectly nice policies (rewilding beavers in England) simply for being tainted by the Tory legacy
So WTAF? Why? Why the terrible deal, why the terrible hurry?
There are now quite lurid speculations on TwiX that certain parties will personally gain, financially, from this calamity, if it is enacted. I was tempted to dismiss them, but in the absence of any better explanation...
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
If we look at the actual numbers, it has added perhaps 8-9% in real terms in nearly 15 years.
(There are numbers out there somewhere.)
Yes and to a totally inadequate pension to start with , still the worst pension in the developed world by a long way.
Currys to offshore more jobs to India as a response to the additional costs of employment imposed by the govt in the budget, or so they claim.
I thought businesses were just going to pay for this out of profits !!!!
"The retailer has previously warned that it faces £30m in extra costs as a result of the Chancellor’s October Budget, at which she announced a £25bn National Insurance (NI) raid on employers, as well as a 6.7pc increase in the minimum wage.
Mr Baldock said that while it was important to invest in staff pay, he warned that some of the new costs announced by Ms Reeves would be harmful to jobs.
“The National Insurance tax is a tax on jobs that doesn’t benefit colleagues at all and actually depresses hiring and boosts offshoring and automation.
“We don’t want to employ fewer people in the UK. We don’t want to depress hiring in the UK. We want to employ more people. We want to be in the box seat for powering growth in this country. We want to invest more, hire more, and help the economy grow faster. What we’re asking for is the environment to allow us to do that.”"
@RossKempsell Labour's Chagos sellout is collapsing - Mauritius refuses to sign after Cabinet meeting this morning, sending negotiators back to London, presumably to bid up the price to UK taxpayers even more
The attitude of the Mauritius government is simply weird. They won't get a better deal from Trump. Sometimes, people just overplay their hand totally,
Maybe they don't want the islands, but they want to have the grievance of not having the islands.
I feel that a few people who campaigned for Brexit might have been happier with the vote going marginally the other way.
It's pretty obvious Starmer is trying to engineer a Falklands crisis. He's feigned vulnerability, Mauritius have taken the bait, 5D chess, THE IRON KNIGHT fights for the RED-FOOTED BOOBY.
Given the absence of any other explanation, this has to be it.
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
It does, and I agree your point, but to make another one against it.
If the pension goes up purely and simply by inflation every year (so no link to average earnings) then in the very long run pensioners who rely on it will fall into poverty.
You can see that by taking say the average wage in 1960 and just uplifting it for inflation and see what that looks like now. It'll be under the poverty line, I bet.
Quite funny really because only just now at PMQs Starmer bragged about the triple lock saying the Tories want to scrap it [ which by the way is the correct policy]
It is the correct policy but no party seems, currently, to want to scrap it.
They will have to eventually to make it sustainable.
Make it the quadruple lock - no less and no more than the Personal Allowance for income tax.
There's no sense in which that implies a "quadruple" lock. It would be a single lock, and would abandon the locks with earnings, inflation, and 2.5%.
Not saying it would necessarily be a bad thing, but it pretty obviously isn't a quadruple anything.
The biggest problem is that the triple lock isn't actually a triple lock, it's a triple ratchet.
Take 3 years as follows for the purposes of the exercise.
Year 1, prices drop by 50%, earnings drop by 50%.
Year 2 prices rise by 100%, earnings stay flat.
year 3 prices stay flat, earnings rise by 100%.
Say the pension is £10,000.
After yr 1 it is worth £10,250 with the 2.5% "lock".
In yr 2 it is worth £20,500 with the prices "lock".
In yr 3 it is worth £41,000 with the earnings "lock".
£10,000 is worth the same as it was at the end of yr 3 as it was at the start - but
The pension has gone by 310% in real terms over the course of 3 years !
Obviously I've exaggerated what would happen in the real world but if you get a lot of hops between the higher of prices and earnings in individual years then the value goes up and up and up (In terms of real prices, real earnings and nominal). It mathematically MUST beat inflation in the long run !
It does, and I agree your point, but to make another one against it.
If the pension goes up purely and simply by inflation every year (so no link to average earnings) then in the very long run pensioners who rely on it will fall into poverty.
You can see that by taking say the average wage in 1960 and just uplifting it for inflation and see what that looks like now. It'll be under the poverty line, I bet.
You can still adjust upward by the higher of earnings, prices, and 2.5% compounded. It would still be 'triple locked'. It is surely not beyond the wit of a gov't department to just plot the three on a graph and keep the pension at the highest of the three lines ?
In my example that'd give a pension of £10,769 after three years. It'd still be up by 7.7% in real terms. It is the long term ratchet effect which is the issue imo.
Richy rich boys scared pensioners are going to get within a thousand miles of them.
@RossKempsell Labour's Chagos sellout is collapsing - Mauritius refuses to sign after Cabinet meeting this morning, sending negotiators back to London, presumably to bid up the price to UK taxpayers even more
The mad rush, especially in the US, to sign inviolable contracts and treaties before Monday lunchtime in Washington is scary to watch.
Has there ever before been so many US regulations and Executive Orders issued in the last week or two of a Presidency before? It’s doubly concerning when we know that the big man isn’t entirely all with it at the moment, so who’s actually writing all this stuff, and hoping to ram it all through before the change of administration?
Meanwhile, Defence Secretary nominee Pate Hesgeth was running rings around the Senate Defence Committee yesterday, a bunch of old people who had very little military experience between them.
What was that, Captain Mainwaring?
A quick check reveals that nearly half of the Armed Services Committee are veterans, including several women, many at senior level.
(Admittedly dramatic) Example: Lieutenant Colonel Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs in Iraq when she was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, and it was hit by an RPG, in 2004. Military career from 1990-2014.
Plus those who are eg ex-CIA and ex-DOD.
I think the USA has Veterans in its establishment in a way beyond our (including my) ken in the UK. Thee are nearly 20 million veterans.
I listened to part of it, and Pete Hegseth was sloping shoulders and generating word salads like a Post Office Executive. I think restraints on questions were more likely generated by a Republican obeissance-to-Trump factor.
Tactical error by the Democrats, though, attacking his (admittedly reprehensible) character.
The possibly persuadable votes against him on the GOP side don't care that he's a dick who has been accused of sexual assault etc. They should have attacked his obvious lack of qualifications - and the fact that he bankrupted the only two (small) organisations that he ever ran.
Serious question: why don't we just sell the Chagos Islands to the highest bidder? "For Sale: one US air base with attached island and inhabitants" We should be able to get a couple of billion, surely?
Great idea. Bidding war ensues between USA and China pushing up the price to the stratosphere.
Trump will understand. "Transactional".
10% cut to all Chagossians. Sorted!
The Chagos "deal" gets weirder. Badenoch mentioned it today in PMQs - why are we giving away territory and paying to do it (yes yes, of course, Truss and Cleverley etc). So she neatly cued up Starmer to finally explain why we must do such a terrible deal, literally paying to be robbed blind, and his best reason was "it was a Tory policy"
And yet we know that Labour will ditch perfectly nice policies (rewilding beavers in England) simply for being tainted by the Tory legacy
So WTAF? Why? Why the terrible deal, why the terrible hurry?
There are now quite lurid speculations on TwiX that certain parties will personally gain, financially, from this calamity, if it is enacted. I was tempted to dismiss them, but in the absence of any better explanation...
As Starmer said at PMQs, the deal started under the last government (as did almost everything Kemi raises) so it sounds unlikely. Inertia, perhaps?
Completed online application for my son for his new passport on evening of 7th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Sent old passport back on 8th Jan. Received text back confirming receipt. Received new passport in the post yesterday (14th).
It can be done - efficient, using technology. Impressed. Looking at their stats, average waiting time has been under 10 days for over a year now.
The passport office has always been great in my experience.
In 2022, it could be up to a month on average. From 2020 onwards it never averaged less than 10 days until autumn 2023. It has been less than 10 days ever since. As Eek says, they have found ways of improving.
Nice to hear about something going well. I guess many things are ticking along quite nicely thank you. There's a big innate (and totally understandable) bias for the opposite, dog bites man, man bites dog etc.
Serious question: why don't we just sell the Chagos Islands to the highest bidder? "For Sale: one US air base with attached island and inhabitants" We should be able to get a couple of billion, surely?
Great idea. Bidding war ensues between USA and China pushing up the price to the stratosphere.
Trump will understand. "Transactional".
10% cut to all Chagossians. Sorted!
The Chagos "deal" gets weirder. Badenoch mentioned it today in PMQs - why are we giving away territory and paying to do it (yes yes, of course, Truss and Cleverley etc). So she neatly cued up Starmer to finally explain why we must do such a terrible deal, literally paying to be robbed blind, and his best reason was "it was a Tory policy"
And yet we know that Labour will ditch perfectly nice policies (rewilding beavers in England) simply for being tainted by the Tory legacy
So WTAF? Why? Why the terrible deal, why the terrible hurry?
There are now quite lurid speculations on TwiX that certain parties will personally gain, financially, from this calamity, if it is enacted. I was tempted to dismiss them, but in the absence of any better explanation...
As Starmer said at PMQs, the deal started under the last government (as did almost everything Kemi raises) so it sounds unlikely. Inertia, perhaps?
Starting a negotiation doesn't mean agreement with every possible outcome of the negotiations.
Currys to offshore more jobs to India as a response to the additional costs of employment imposed by the govt in the budget, or so they claim.
I thought businesses were just going to pay for this out of profits !!!!
"The retailer has previously warned that it faces £30m in extra costs as a result of the Chancellor’s October Budget, at which she announced a £25bn National Insurance (NI) raid on employers, as well as a 6.7pc increase in the minimum wage.
Mr Baldock said that while it was important to invest in staff pay, he warned that some of the new costs announced by Ms Reeves would be harmful to jobs.
“The National Insurance tax is a tax on jobs that doesn’t benefit colleagues at all and actually depresses hiring and boosts offshoring and automation.
“We don’t want to employ fewer people in the UK. We don’t want to depress hiring in the UK. We want to employ more people. We want to be in the box seat for powering growth in this country. We want to invest more, hire more, and help the economy grow faster. What we’re asking for is the environment to allow us to do that.”"
Perhaps he should concentrate on their core processes, my 2 local Currys stores are utter basket cases where the simple function of accepting customer payment for an item they've picked up from a shelf seems to have been rendered nigh on impossible by their till system. As they are almost the only highstreet/retail park consumer electrical retailer left they should be taking all the immediate purchase business.
Ironically, this guy could be characterized using both the words he cites.
Are you saying that calling Trump a retarded pussy is somehow reprehensible?
I once had a very stupid cat, but he never tried to overthrow the government. Or sexually assault a journalist. Or fiddle his taxes. Or falsify election returns. Or threaten judges.
Ironically, this guy could be characterized using both the words he cites.
Are you saying that calling Trump a retarded pussy is somehow reprehensible?
I once had a very stupid cat, but he never tried to overthrow the government. Or sexually assault a journalist. Or fiddle his taxes. Or falsify election returns. Or threaten judges.
It’s really not on to compare him to Trump.
No, cats should never be insulted like that. Beautiful creatures they are.
Currys to offshore more jobs to India as a response to the additional costs of employment imposed by the govt in the budget, or so they claim.
I thought businesses were just going to pay for this out of profits !!!!
"The retailer has previously warned that it faces £30m in extra costs as a result of the Chancellor’s October Budget, at which she announced a £25bn National Insurance (NI) raid on employers, as well as a 6.7pc increase in the minimum wage.
Mr Baldock said that while it was important to invest in staff pay, he warned that some of the new costs announced by Ms Reeves would be harmful to jobs.
“The National Insurance tax is a tax on jobs that doesn’t benefit colleagues at all and actually depresses hiring and boosts offshoring and automation.
“We don’t want to employ fewer people in the UK. We don’t want to depress hiring in the UK. We want to employ more people. We want to be in the box seat for powering growth in this country. We want to invest more, hire more, and help the economy grow faster. What we’re asking for is the environment to allow us to do that.”"
Perhaps he should concentrate on their core processes, my 2 local Currys stores are utter basket cases where the simple function of accepting customer payment for an item they've picked up from a shelf seems to have been rendered nigh on impossible by their till system. As they are almost the only highstreet/retail park consumer electrical retailer left they should be taking all the immediate purchase business.
Let me guess, you give them a USB cable you pulled off the shelf, and they immediately ask you for your mobile phone number?
Comments
IIRC the original UK Gold screening was in black and white. Certainly some of the first copies to get out to fans were.
I do like Stones of Blood and it was one of the last Dr Who stories to show a character Smoking. De Vries smokes a cigarette.
It's quite a fun story like that whole season. Vivian Fay is quite an interesting character.
I can forgive naff FX far more than I can forgive poor acting or scripting.
Last one I watched was the coloured War Games which I think worked rather well and the colour work very good.
In 2022 due to inflation.
In 2023 due to wages (which took a while to respond).
Which is the real (but fiddly to explain) reason why clawing back the winter fuel payment was necessary and now was roughly the right technocratic time to do it.
If the pension goes up purely and simply by inflation every year (so no link to average earnings) then in the very long run pensioners who rely on it will fall into poverty.
You can see that by taking say the average wage in 1960 and just uplifting it for inflation and see what that looks like now. It'll be under the poverty line, I bet.
So the triple lock will have to be broken eventually. Although eventually doesn't necessarily mean over the next four years. The basic state pension is better than it was in the UK, but it's hardly lavish. There's a totally reasonable debate to be had about how far pensioners can or should be insulated from economic challenges facing the UK. But some of the tone of the debate tends towards the idea that slightly younger people are being shafted by millions of avaricious wrinklies, and that isn't very realistic.
And yet we know that Labour will ditch perfectly nice policies (rewilding beavers in England) simply for being tainted by the Tory legacy
So WTAF? Why? Why the terrible deal, why the terrible hurry?
There are now quite lurid speculations on TwiX that certain parties will personally gain, financially, from this calamity, if it is enacted. I was tempted to dismiss them, but in the absence of any better explanation...
I thought businesses were just going to pay for this out of profits !!!!
"The retailer has previously warned that it faces £30m in extra costs as a result of the Chancellor’s October Budget, at which she announced a £25bn National Insurance (NI) raid on employers, as well as a 6.7pc increase in the minimum wage.
Mr Baldock said that while it was important to invest in staff pay, he warned that some of the new costs announced by Ms Reeves would be harmful to jobs.
“The National Insurance tax is a tax on jobs that doesn’t benefit colleagues at all and actually depresses hiring and boosts offshoring and automation.
“We don’t want to employ fewer people in the UK. We don’t want to depress hiring in the UK. We want to employ more people. We want to be in the box seat for powering growth in this country. We want to invest more, hire more, and help the economy grow faster. What we’re asking for is the environment to allow us to do that.”"
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/currys-to-outsource-staff-to-india-after-reeves-s-tax-raid/ar-AA1xeG9r?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=9e8260cf29bd453d92da18c065a6e586&ei=7
I expected major hassles, and delay, instead I got a personal phone call from a friendly intelligent Scotch lady within 72 hours of my application, to clarify my needs, and the passport arrived a few days later. Total 8 days? 9?
Superb
Whatever they are doing at the UKPO, read across for every single HMG department
I feel that a few people who campaigned for Brexit might have been happier with the vote going marginally the other way.
Maybe his good friend, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, could stage the intervention?
(There are numbers out there somewhere.)
In my example that'd give a pension of £10,769 after three years. It'd still be up by 7.7% in real terms. It is the long term ratchet effect which is the issue imo.
I reckon out of all that previously self-censored thought and opinion that will now fizz around the internet, the workplace and the home will come the secret of intergalactic travel and a cure for cancer.
#vibeshift
A quick check reveals that nearly half of the Armed Services Committee are veterans, including several women, many at senior level.
(Admittedly dramatic) Example: Lieutenant Colonel Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs in Iraq when she was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, and it was hit by an RPG, in 2004. Military career from 1990-2014.
Plus those who are eg ex-CIA and ex-DOD.
I think the USA has Veterans in its establishment in a way beyond our (including my) ken in the UK. Thee are nearly 20 million veterans.
I listened to part of it, and Pete Hegseth was sloping shoulders and generating word salads like a Post Office Executive. I think restraints on questions were more likely generated by a Republican obeissance-to-Trump factor.
Given the absence of any other explanation, this has to be it.
Badenoch has surprised me because one of the things I thought she would be good at, if nothing else, was PMQs. Instead she stumbles around a set of scripted topics/statements as if she’s just teeing things up for Starmer to knock down. She is better when she focuses on one topic, like last week, but it’s far from good even then.
The only reason people aren’t even harder on her is Starmer isn’t that great either. If she was facing someone like Blair she’d be mortifyingly embarrassing.
Lo and behold, as Trump arrives, a ceasefire looms in Gaza. If Biden/Harris had won. this would likely not be happening
You can thank me later
NEW THREAD
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1964/jan/27/working-hours-and-earnings
Apr 1960 average wage was 14.10 weekly = 733.20 pa for 52 weeks
Bank of England inflation calculator gives 14413 smackers.
But that's using CPI ...
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
Hmmm....
The possibly persuadable votes against him on the GOP side don't care that he's a dick who has been accused of sexual assault etc.
They should have attacked his obvious lack of qualifications - and the fact that he bankrupted the only two (small) organisations that he ever ran.
As they are almost the only highstreet/retail park consumer electrical retailer left they should be taking all the immediate purchase business.
It’s really not on to compare him to Trump.