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I am now convinced Badenoch is safe in the short term at least – politicalbetting.com

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  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,481
    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 53,569
    Battlebus said:

    "Russia offers safe haven for people trying to escape Western liberal ideals"

    AFAIK the offer is still open. Anyone wanting to take up the offer?

    https://tass.com/politics/1831019
    "Hey, I ws only trolling! Get me off this Aeroflot plane!"

    "Don't worry about Moscow, Comrade Glenn - the chances of us landing safely are very low...."
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 4,160

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    It’s a business asset: everybody else has to pay it, why should farmers be exempt? The land will still get farmed by somebody.
    That's if you like the idea of farms being bought up steadily by corporations. That's worked out so very well in the US. Almost as well as their healthcare system. Or democracy, come to think of it.
    Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.
    You don't give a damn about anyone who exists outside the very narrow understanding of your very bitter fixed mindset. By contrast I do give a damn about people like you even though you are a twat.
    Language Timothy!!!
  • bigglesbiggles Posts: 6,618
    edited February 17
    rcs1000 said:

    So do I. You cannot tell me that there's not a vast mountain of waste to cut through before a penny more in taxes on top of their current eye-watering levels is needed. Any more taxes and we won't have an economy to pay the taxes.

    This is the former Minister for Efficiency:
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-impossible-task-as-minister-for-efficiency/
    On my first day in office, I met the then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He told me that his most difficult problem was finding me an office. (He never did.) That set the tone of the Treasury’s approach to confronting waste.

    I did manage to cancel 33 government property leases in London, which saved about £1 billion (only £199 billion to go!). But the biggest termination of all, signed and sealed by two cabinet ministers and myself, was overturned after I left (102 Petty France, overlooking St James’s Park). Why?Simply because the civil servants didn’t want to lose the lovely view.

    Last week the government answered a written parliamentary question on the amount of overpayments made through Universal Credit, which amounts to nearly £6 billion a year. And yet at the same time they have introduced a controversial death tax on farmers which might generate a tenth of that. The truth is, it is much easier for the administrative machine to slam in a new tax than do the difficult work of running the state more effectively.


    And so it goes on. This organisation needs to get the Doge treatment and then some - and that's before we even start on the quangocracy.
    There's not a vast mountain of waste.

    There is a massive perceived mountain of waste. But not an actual massive mountain of waste.
    Yup. Of course the good news is that perceived problems only need to be perceived to have been solved. The lowest of low hanging fruit.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,802

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    Just because we don’t agree with you doesn’t make us thick. Grow up. Almost as immature as the lazy “lefties hate farmers” analysis.
    Thanks for your lazy attempt to patronise me, but I'm quite grown up thanks, and having seen some of your very simplistic posts before, I think your suggestion might be a little bit of psychological projection. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but when they are unable to grasp simple concepts then yeh, I will call them thick. There is no rationale to this tax change. Starmer says only a few farmers will be hit which is lie, otherwise, what the fuck is the point in doing it?

    PS liked the later addition/edit to your post. Your wit caught up with the slowness of your general simplistic lefty thought process?
    At the end of the day not hating farmers and not agreeing that farmers should be entitled to inherit multi million pound assets at a much lower tax rate than everyone else is a consistent position. I understand your point about the fact it’s a going concern but the reality is inheriting a going concern is a privilege in of itself. That is, unfortunately, a fact. I personally support other ways of supporting farmers and farming without the state subsidising certain people’s inheritances.
    How is it the state 'subsidising' anything? The state has been taxing people all their lives, why should it autmatocally receive another great chunk of what's left when they're dead?

    You should be asking why anyone pays it, not why farmers don't.
    If the state decides that a certain class of person should pay less tax then that is a subsidy.

    You can argue about the morality of taxation generally but at the end of the day its a fact of life and we get taxed and taxed again on everything. Inheritance isn’t some special case.
  • Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    Just because we don’t agree with you doesn’t make us thick. Grow up. Almost as immature as the lazy “lefties hate farmers” analysis.
    Thanks for your lazy attempt to patronise me, but I'm quite grown up thanks, and having seen some of your very simplistic posts before, I think your suggestion might be a little bit of psychological projection. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but when they are unable to grasp simple concepts then yeh, I will call them thick. There is no rationale to this tax change. Starmer says only a few farmers will be hit which is lie, otherwise, what the fuck is the point in doing it?

    PS liked the later addition/edit to your post. Your wit caught up with the slowness of your general simplistic lefty thought process?
    At the end of the day not hating farmers and not agreeing that farmers should be entitled to inherit multi million pound assets at a much lower tax rate than everyone else is a consistent position. I understand your point about the fact it’s a going concern but the reality is inheriting a going concern is a privilege in of itself. That is, unfortunately, a fact. I personally support other ways of supporting farmers and farming without the state subsidising certain people’s inheritances.
    How is it the state 'subsidising' anything? The state has been taxing people all their lives, why should it autmatocally receive another great chunk of what's left when they're dead?

    You should be asking why anyone pays it, not why farmers don't.
    A lot of people go through their lives not being taxed much, actually. Especially if they don't earn their income via PAYE and don't pay NI etc.

    Taxing land annually and reducing the tax rate on work proportionately would do much to equalise the way people are treated and discourage many of the perverse incentives that exist today which is why people buy banks of land they have no intention of personally working.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,645

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    Just because we don’t agree with you doesn’t make us thick. Grow up. Almost as immature as the lazy “lefties hate farmers” analysis.
    Thanks for your lazy attempt to patronise me, but I'm quite grown up thanks, and having seen some of your very simplistic posts before, I think your suggestion might be a little bit of psychological projection. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but when they are unable to grasp simple concepts then yeh, I will call them thick. There is no rationale to this tax change. Starmer says only a few farmers will be hit which is lie, otherwise, what the fuck is the point in doing it?

    PS liked the later addition/edit to your post. Your wit caught up with the slowness of your general simplistic lefty thought process?
    At the end of the day not hating farmers and not agreeing that farmers should be entitled to inherit multi million pound assets at a much lower tax rate than everyone else is a consistent position. I understand your point about the fact it’s a going concern but the reality is inheriting a going concern is a privilege in of itself. That is, unfortunately, a fact. I personally support other ways of supporting farmers and farming without the state subsidising certain people’s inheritances.
    Oh dear. The point is, that what the government has done is to make many many businesses (not just farms) less viable and not be going concerns. On top of this they have burdened employment. The envy that drips from your statement "inherit multi million pound assets" sums up the misunderstanding. For most farming families it is irrelevant whether the assets are worth millions or worth £100. The asset is needs for the business to be viable. Sure, they should pay tax if they sell up and decide to live the life of a superannuated top brass civil servant (or maybe even Rachel Reeves maxing out the expenses credit card), but most do not want to do that. The whole thing is driven by spite.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,667
    edited February 17

    Nigelb said:

    Another disconnect between Reform and the Tory rump.

    Public's intuition is for a peace-protection role in Ukraine

    62-65% across LD, Lab, Cons

    Reform split (43% for/35% against) shows gulf between the most vocal and the more casual swing Reform voter. Reform's Very Online advocates on X are different to their target voters

    https://x.com/sundersays/status/1891445907423392045\

    This though is an interesting detail:

    On many issues, Reform swing voters [those who join if poll above 14%] have contrasting views to a core 7% represented vocally in activists & online

    Many examples
    - Ukraine
    - Oppose net zero
    - Trump
    - Musk
    - Tommy Robinson

    Replace NHS (may not be strong in core either)


    Who are the PB core Reform, and who the swingers ?

    The swingers are the ones with pampas grass in their gardens.

    Reform tend to have bits of car parts.
    Presumably Reform swingers have pampas grass growing out of their car parts?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    edited February 17
    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    Precisely and everyone I know rents, everytime there is an interest rate hike...rents go up to cover it.....everytime something like a lvt comes in I am sure it will be the same

    Merely saying the idea you can bring in something that affects landlords won't be passed on in rent rises which some seem to believe is for the birds
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,481

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    Just because we don’t agree with you doesn’t make us thick. Grow up. Almost as immature as the lazy “lefties hate farmers” analysis.
    Thanks for your lazy attempt to patronise me, but I'm quite grown up thanks, and having seen some of your very simplistic posts before, I think your suggestion might be a little bit of psychological projection. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but when they are unable to grasp simple concepts then yeh, I will call them thick. There is no rationale to this tax change. Starmer says only a few farmers will be hit which is lie, otherwise, what the fuck is the point in doing it?

    PS liked the later addition/edit to your post. Your wit caught up with the slowness of your general simplistic lefty thought process?
    At the end of the day not hating farmers and not agreeing that farmers should be entitled to inherit multi million pound assets at a much lower tax rate than everyone else is a consistent position. I understand your point about the fact it’s a going concern but the reality is inheriting a going concern is a privilege in of itself. That is, unfortunately, a fact. I personally support other ways of supporting farmers and farming without the state subsidising certain people’s inheritances.
    How is it the state 'subsidising' anything? The state has been taxing people all their lives, why should it autmatocally receive another great chunk of what's left when they're dead?

    You should be asking why anyone pays it, not why farmers don't.
    If the state decides that a certain class of person should pay less tax then that is a subsidy.

    You can argue about the morality of taxation generally but at the end of the day its a fact of life and we get taxed and taxed again on everything. Inheritance isn’t some special case.
    One man's tax break is another man's tax burden.
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 4,160

    Nigelb said:

    Another disconnect between Reform and the Tory rump.

    Public's intuition is for a peace-protection role in Ukraine

    62-65% across LD, Lab, Cons

    Reform split (43% for/35% against) shows gulf between the most vocal and the more casual swing Reform voter. Reform's Very Online advocates on X are different to their target voters

    https://x.com/sundersays/status/1891445907423392045\

    This though is an interesting detail:

    On many issues, Reform swing voters [those who join if poll above 14%] have contrasting views to a core 7% represented vocally in activists & online

    Many examples
    - Ukraine
    - Oppose net zero
    - Trump
    - Musk
    - Tommy Robinson

    Replace NHS (may not be strong in core either)


    Who are the PB core Reform, and who the swingers ?

    The swingers are the ones with pampas grass in their gardens.

    Reform tend to have bits of car parts.
    And also broken iPhone screens..
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,645

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    It’s a business asset: everybody else has to pay it, why should farmers be exempt? The land will still get farmed by somebody.
    That's if you like the idea of farms being bought up steadily by corporations. That's worked out so very well in the US. Almost as well as their healthcare system. Or democracy, come to think of it.
    Right now it’s being steadily bought up by the likes of James Dyson instead. Is that really an improvement?
    Come on, if the government really wanted to stop James Dyson and a few others using it as a tax haven they could do it at a few strokes of an HMRC bureaucrats pen. This is nothing to do with that, it is about the Labour Party's inability to understand business and a large part of it's support base either not understanding or hating the farming community. Like they always do, they have used envy to try to garner support by pretending that if someone has a large farming asset value then they have "broad shoulders" when the reality is that most farmers earn less than most public sector pensioners earn
    Maybe they should sell the land to someone who can use it more productively then?

    We could turn it into housing, or factories, and import our food instead. They can get a job that pays well, we can use our finite land more efficiently, what is their to lose?

    Unless they're not actually so impoverished and do want to keep their standard of living they are accustomed to?
    It must be very difficult for you Bart. The envy you have for those who have what you do not must hurt so much. Here is a tip for you: spend less time on here talking bollocks and go and set up a business. Try and build it and work hard. You never know, one day you might be successful.
    Why would I be envious of those you pretend are so impoverished they can't afford to pay a fraction of the taxes everyone else pays?

    If it were up to me though I'd go the other way. Slash taxes on income and put up taxes on land instead. If people are too impoverished to pay the taxes, they can sell it, but if they work hard they'll be able to keep their income. Surely you would support that, unless you're full of shit?
    No I wouldn't because I am not a socialist, and that would be a very socialist policy. You are clearly so bitter about your lack of wealth for which I do feel sorry about. It must be very painful. Suggestion for you instead of getting yourself excited about what you would do if you ruled the world; go and earn some.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,481
    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,802

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    Just because we don’t agree with you doesn’t make us thick. Grow up. Almost as immature as the lazy “lefties hate farmers” analysis.
    Thanks for your lazy attempt to patronise me, but I'm quite grown up thanks, and having seen some of your very simplistic posts before, I think your suggestion might be a little bit of psychological projection. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but when they are unable to grasp simple concepts then yeh, I will call them thick. There is no rationale to this tax change. Starmer says only a few farmers will be hit which is lie, otherwise, what the fuck is the point in doing it?

    PS liked the later addition/edit to your post. Your wit caught up with the slowness of your general simplistic lefty thought process?
    At the end of the day not hating farmers and not agreeing that farmers should be entitled to inherit multi million pound assets at a much lower tax rate than everyone else is a consistent position. I understand your point about the fact it’s a going concern but the reality is inheriting a going concern is a privilege in of itself. That is, unfortunately, a fact. I personally support other ways of supporting farmers and farming without the state subsidising certain people’s inheritances.
    Oh dear. The point is, that what the government has done is to make many many businesses (not just farms) less viable and not be going concerns. On top of this they have burdened employment. The envy that drips from your statement "inherit multi million pound assets" sums up the misunderstanding. For most farming families it is irrelevant whether the assets are worth millions or worth £100. The asset is needs for the business to be viable. Sure, they should pay tax if they sell up and decide to live the life of a superannuated top brass civil servant (or maybe even Rachel Reeves maxing out the expenses credit card), but most do not want to do that. The whole thing is driven by spite.
    You can wang on about “envy” all you want but it changes nothing. It also changes nothing whether the people inheriting the land are bothered about the value of it (which is clearly bollocks). The fact of the matter is that inheriting million of pounds of assets is an immense privilege and if these businesses cannot plan for such an event or are not viable then that’s a problem with the business (or maybe our trade policies). If you can’t see that then you are out of touch completely.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 33,641
    "Badenoch likens Conservatives to Trump’s Maga movement
    Tory leader says party is in ‘crisis’ and needs to reinvent itself after election defeat" (£)

    https://www.ft.com/content/54e43437-5a1d-41a9-9ec8-707d3993d2a8
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
    Well maybe in london but thats a different country....I doubt people buy property for investment purposes and leave it empty outside london
  • Phil said:

    Phil said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    It’s a business asset: everybody else has to pay it, why should farmers be exempt? The land will still get farmed by somebody.
    That's if you like the idea of farms being bought up steadily by corporations. That's worked out so very well in the US. Almost as well as their healthcare system. Or democracy, come to think of it.
    Right now it’s being steadily bought up by the likes of James Dyson instead. Is that really an improvement?
    Come on, if the government really wanted to stop James Dyson and a few others using it as a tax haven they could do it at a few strokes of an HMRC bureaucrats pen. This is nothing to do with that, it is about the Labour Party's inability to understand business and a large part of it's support base either not understanding or hating the farming community. Like they always do, they have used envy to try to garner support by pretending that if someone has a large farming asset value then they have "broad shoulders" when the reality is that most farmers earn less than most public sector pensioners earn
    Maybe they should sell the land to someone who can use it more productively then?

    We could turn it into housing, or factories, and import our food instead. They can get a job that pays well, we can use our finite land more efficiently, what is their to lose?

    Unless they're not actually so impoverished and do want to keep their standard of living they are accustomed to?
    It must be very difficult for you Bart. The envy you have for those who have what you do not must hurt so much. Here is a tip for you: spend less time on here talking bollocks and go and set up a business. Try and build it and work hard. You never know, one day you might be successful.
    Why would I be envious of those you pretend are so impoverished they can't afford to pay a fraction of the taxes everyone else pays?

    If it were up to me though I'd go the other way. Slash taxes on income and put up taxes on land instead. If people are too impoverished to pay the taxes, they can sell it, but if they work hard they'll be able to keep their income. Surely you would support that, unless you're full of shit?
    No I wouldn't because I am not a socialist, and that would be a very socialist policy. You are clearly so bitter about your lack of wealth for which I do feel sorry about. It must be very painful. Suggestion for you instead of getting yourself excited about what you would do if you ruled the world; go and earn some.
    Taxing what people work for less is "socialist".

    Quite an interesting definition of socialism you have.
  • TazTaz Posts: 16,604

    Nigelb said:

    Another disconnect between Reform and the Tory rump.

    Public's intuition is for a peace-protection role in Ukraine

    62-65% across LD, Lab, Cons

    Reform split (43% for/35% against) shows gulf between the most vocal and the more casual swing Reform voter. Reform's Very Online advocates on X are different to their target voters

    https://x.com/sundersays/status/1891445907423392045\

    This though is an interesting detail:

    On many issues, Reform swing voters [those who join if poll above 14%] have contrasting views to a core 7% represented vocally in activists & online

    Many examples
    - Ukraine
    - Oppose net zero
    - Trump
    - Musk
    - Tommy Robinson

    Replace NHS (may not be strong in core either)


    Who are the PB core Reform, and who the swingers ?

    The swingers are the ones with pampas grass in their gardens.

    Reform tend to have bits of car parts.
    And also broken iPhone screens..
    Apparently it is incredibly hard to dig our pampas grass. My Aunt told me.

    She was quite miffed when I cracked a swingers joke to her.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,645

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it.

    That’s quite the deal compared to the one everyone else gets for paying IHT.

    Farmland prices should drop as a result of this change, which will ultimately be beneficial to UK farmers who want to actually buy land & farm it profitably.

    Unfortunately they won’t drop down to the price that would make sense to farm as a going concern because of the potential for any agricultural land to be given planning permission for housing. The solution to his is for the government to take the uplift in land values from being given planning permission. I expect absolute explosions from the usual suspects when/if this gets implemented - IIRC it was hinted at in the Labour manifesto but not made explicit.

    "Farmers get a) a lower rate of IHT and b) ten years to pay it."

    Fucking marvellous mate! When you inherit granny's bungalow that you have your eye on for years you won't be SAD about selling it because you don't need it to earn your living. This is the difference between inheriting a farm or a business and inheriting almost anything else. The asset is required to keep the business viable you fuckwit, and it doesnt matter that you have 10 years to pay it off because perhaps now the business is no longer viable.

    WHY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO FUCKING THICK?
    Just because we don’t agree with you doesn’t make us thick. Grow up. Almost as immature as the lazy “lefties hate farmers” analysis.
    Thanks for your lazy attempt to patronise me, but I'm quite grown up thanks, and having seen some of your very simplistic posts before, I think your suggestion might be a little bit of psychological projection. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but when they are unable to grasp simple concepts then yeh, I will call them thick. There is no rationale to this tax change. Starmer says only a few farmers will be hit which is lie, otherwise, what the fuck is the point in doing it?

    PS liked the later addition/edit to your post. Your wit caught up with the slowness of your general simplistic lefty thought process?
    At the end of the day not hating farmers and not agreeing that farmers should be entitled to inherit multi million pound assets at a much lower tax rate than everyone else is a consistent position. I understand your point about the fact it’s a going concern but the reality is inheriting a going concern is a privilege in of itself. That is, unfortunately, a fact. I personally support other ways of supporting farmers and farming without the state subsidising certain people’s inheritances.
    Oh dear. The point is, that what the government has done is to make many many businesses (not just farms) less viable and not be going concerns. On top of this they have burdened employment. The envy that drips from your statement "inherit multi million pound assets" sums up the misunderstanding. For most farming families it is irrelevant whether the assets are worth millions or worth £100. The asset is needs for the business to be viable. Sure, they should pay tax if they sell up and decide to live the life of a superannuated top brass civil servant (or maybe even Rachel Reeves maxing out the expenses credit card), but most do not want to do that. The whole thing is driven by spite.
    You can wang on about “envy” all you want but it changes nothing. It also changes nothing whether the people inheriting the land are bothered about the value of it (which is clearly bollocks). The fact of the matter is that inheriting million of pounds of assets is an immense privilege and if these businesses cannot plan for such an event or are not viable then that’s a problem with the business (or maybe our trade policies). If you can’t see that then you are out of touch completely.
    I don't think I am the one out of touch here. I seem to recall that you are perhaps not very experienced in life (my turn to be patronising). Have you ever built up a business? Employed people? Had a family? Taken risks? Continued to take financial risks for the sake of your employees? Like many others who create wealth I have done all these things. You? I suspect not. I am not out of touch sonny.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    edited February 17
    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
    Well maybe in london but thats a different country....I doubt people buy property for investment purposes and leave it empty outside london
    This morning the most read article on the BBC was this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg9y544wx3o

    "House prices plunge as council acts on second homes". Not just an urban problem.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 64,216
    Irwin Stelzer in yesterday's Times proposes that UK increase import of USA LNG gas to help stave off tariffs.

    Madness.

    US now a totally unreliable partner for vital energy supplies imho.

    It is being led by capricious fools who change their views every day. How can we possibly rely on them not turning against UK over some slight or other and cutting the supply?

    We have to get real.

    We are no longer in Kansas, Toto.

  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    Eabhal said:


    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
    Well maybe in london but thats a different country....I doubt people buy property for investment purposes and leave it empty outside london
    This morning the most read article on the BBC was this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg9y544wx3o

    "House prices plunge as council acts on second homes". Not just an urban problem.
    Sorry your point is what here exactly? Care to explain? A second home in wales is unlikely to be bought for investment purposes
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,980

    Irwin Stelzer in yesterday's Times proposes that UK increase import of USA LNG gas to help stave off tariffs.

    Madness.

    US now a totally unreliable partner for vital energy supplies imho.

    It is being led by capricious fools who change their views every day. How can we possibly rely on them not turning against UK over some slight or other and cutting the supply?

    We have to get real.

    We are no longer in Kansas, Toto.

    Yes, USA will lose out to Canada.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6VdEaXATQ4
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 14,645
    Good night everyone. Unlike @BartholomewRoberts I can't stay on here any longer as I have work to do. Then I must get up early to survey my vast acreage lol.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 53,587

    Irwin Stelzer in yesterday's Times proposes that UK increase import of USA LNG gas to help stave off tariffs.

    Madness.

    US now a totally unreliable partner for vital energy supplies imho.

    It is being led by capricious fools who change their views every day. How can we possibly rely on them not turning against UK over some slight or other and cutting the supply?

    We have to get real.

    We are no longer in Kansas, Toto.

    Have you forgotten Obama's attacks on "British Petroleum" or Clinton welcoming Gerry Adams?
  • 11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,619
    edited February 17
    My observations on the agricultural land tax avoidance scheme:

    1. The government could probably put in some safeguards to protect the relatively few farmers who would be forced to sell up rather than pass the farm on within the family. (As opposed to those who are only interested in tax avoidance). That the government doesn't put in safeguards suggests it doesn't see a lot of political downside.
    2. The real reason why farmers who own their farms are upset by this measure is that their asset is artificially boosted due to its attraction as a tax avoidance vehicle to high net worth individuals. The land becomes less valuable if the tax avoidance is removed.
    3. This is not a great rallying point for the Conservatives (as opposed to inheritance tax on the middle classes, which might be). Why would the populace care if very rich people lose a tax break that doesn't apply to anyone else?
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    edited February 17
    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:


    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
    Well maybe in london but thats a different country....I doubt people buy property for investment purposes and leave it empty outside london
    This morning the most read article on the BBC was this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg9y544wx3o

    "House prices plunge as council acts on second homes". Not just an urban problem.
    Sorry your point is what here exactly? Care to explain? A second home in wales is unlikely to be bought for investment purposes
    That you are wrong, because you suggested that most homes are empty because of probate, and wrong again when you swivelled and suggested it was due to investment.

    (It's because some people have loads of cash to splash, and the fact house prices tend to go up all the time makes them a safe place for that cash. Plus you get a nice house in Wales for a couple of long weekends a year).
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 53,587

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    RIP the Labour client vote.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,470
    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    edited February 17
    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission on a 20mph limit in Wales ;)
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:


    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
    Well maybe in london but thats a different country....I doubt people buy property for investment purposes and leave it empty outside london
    This morning the most read article on the BBC was this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg9y544wx3o

    "House prices plunge as council acts on second homes". Not just an urban problem.
    Sorry your point is what here exactly? Care to explain? A second home in wales is unlikely to be bought for investment purposes
    That you are wrong, because you suggested that most homes are empty because of probate, and wrong again when you swivelled and suggested it was due to investment.

    (It's because some people have loads of cash to splash, and the fact house prices tend to go up all the time makes them a safe place for that cash. Plus you get a nice house in Wales for a couple of long weekends a year).
    I come from a similar place to wales, cornwall....plenty of second homes but rarely left empty they were rented out when the owners didn't want to use them because else it wasn't financially viable.

    Only in london is it worth buying a property that can be left vacant for years
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 4,160
    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    I have to admit that on 20mph roads it's a lot easier to pull out, and also cross the road as a pedestrian.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,829

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    Well the birth rate is way below replacement.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 52,941
    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:


    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
    Well maybe in london but thats a different country....I doubt people buy property for investment purposes and leave it empty outside london
    This morning the most read article on the BBC was this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg9y544wx3o

    "House prices plunge as council acts on second homes". Not just an urban problem.
    Sorry your point is what here exactly? Care to explain? A second home in wales is unlikely to be bought for investment purposes
    That you are wrong, because you suggested that most homes are empty because of probate, and wrong again when you swivelled and suggested it was due to investment.

    (It's because some people have loads of cash to splash, and the fact house prices tend to go up all the time makes them a safe place for that cash. Plus you get a nice house in Wales for a couple of long weekends a year).
    Plus a second home in the country is handy in case of aliens melting the icecaps and flooding London.

    Or a flu like plague.

    There was a chap here who bolted during COVID… name escapes me..”
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 22,909
    edited February 17
    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    93% of respondents favoured the roads being 30mph, so they're staying at 20mph.

    That's not local interests, its politicians with an agenda.

    Based on safety data, we should be increasing speed limits to 40 not cutting them to 20. Driving at 40 today is as safe as driving at 30 was in the past and casualties are falling not rising, but we have zealots taking over with a zero-risk agenda.
  • Pulpstar said:

    Nigelb said:

    "If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty":
    https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1891533180823380033

    Zelensky simply said no, but it's fairly clear that the US under Trump, just wants to grift what it can, and damn the consequences.

    Munich last week, Paris tommorow. Someone's got a sense of humour with where all these meetings are being held.
    London, Paris, New York, Munich.

    Everybody's talkin' 'bout...

    Pop music.
    One of the best Private Eye cartoons ever:



    http://www.roystoncartoons.com/2017/08/life-imitating-cartoons-yet-again.html?m=1
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 11,208

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    Inevitable I guess. Given we seem to really have no armed forces at all I'm pretty keen that we up defence spending. The question is how much? To pluck a number out of thin air maybe I'd double it, but does that mean that the armed forces would just be doubly useless?

    Peacetime defence spending has a long history of being completely wasted here in the UK. (I can say France too as I know something of that, but undoubtedly most nations).

    At a small cost we could do much more strategic planning though - the idea that we could quickly run out of gas, or food, or lollipops is insane.

  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    edited February 17
    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.

    The problem is that consultations are dominated by people like you, to be frank. And the people who respond to them are routinely shocked when it turns out not everyone else is permanently online.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 34,973

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    Are there no workhouses?
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 5,173
    The only surprise about that number is that it isn't higher. As per usual, most people think that everything should be paid for by someone else.

    Nonetheless, taxes will have to go up, because there is precious little left that the Government dare cut and it can't allow borrowing to balloon. That would violate the Chancellor's fiscal rules, and the risk is it would wreck the Treasury's reputation with Britain's creditors and make borrowing too expensive in any case. We also have to remember that, beyond defence, the state pension bill is accelerating out of control and the Government will be forced to offer above inflation pay settlements to the public sector, or else they'll simply go back on strike and wreck any attempts to meet targets on cutting hospital waiting times, for example. This is all going to be very expensive.

    So, once it runs out of options, Labour will ramp income tax and national insurance. Because, as with the Tories, when push comes to shove and they have to raise tax they'll always prioritise earnings over assets, wages over wealth. They're not so dissimilar from what went before really. They should be called the Capital Party.
  • maxhmaxh Posts: 1,435

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    RIP the Labour client vote.
    I dunno. I'm precisely what you'd term a 'Labour client vote' and I'd put up with both larger class sizes and lower pay rises to find money for defence.

    Though, in full disclosure, I am somewhat odd.
  • Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.
    With 93% of respondents favouring 30mph, yes, that data is in the article indeed.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 64,468
    edited February 17
    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    What you do not understand in Wales is that different authorities implemented the change differently with counties like Monmouth and Gwynedd imposes less than other counties especially in North Wales

    Hundreds of roads are being reverted back to 30mph no matter how you try to say otherwise

    Maybe wait until all the road changes have been made then comment accordingly

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 44,398
    edited February 17
    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    Doesn't make sense. People usually - well, the ones who owned houses - bought then in their 30s and died in their 80s and the house would be empty for what, a year or two in a bad case because you can get on with clearing and tidying meantime. That's about 2 out of 50 years down to probate plus also things like clearing out and selling and lawyers with their wrists rammed up as high as their appendices.
  • BattlebusBattlebus Posts: 386

    Irwin Stelzer in yesterday's Times proposes that UK increase import of USA LNG gas to help stave off tariffs.

    Madness.

    US now a totally unreliable partner for vital energy supplies imho.

    It is being led by capricious fools who change their views every day. How can we possibly rely on them not turning against UK over some slight or other and cutting the supply?

    We have to get real.

    We are no longer in Kansas, Toto.

    Siri - what does Project25 think about US energy ambitions

    "Full-spectrum strategic energy dominance would facilitate the reinvigoration of America’s entire industrial and manufacturing sector as we disentangle our economy from China. Globally, it would rebalance power away from dangerous regimes in Russia and the Middle East. It would build powerful alliances with fast-growing nations in Africa and provide us the leverage to counter Chinese ambitions in South America and the Pacific"

    So Russia, China and Middle East suppliers need to be replaced. So drill, baby, drill.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,470
    Pulpstar said:

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    Well the birth rate is way below replacement.
    Good!
  • Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:


    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    That may be true where you live, but in some London boroughs, 30+% of properties are empty, and that has nothing to do with probate.
    Well maybe in london but thats a different country....I doubt people buy property for investment purposes and leave it empty outside london
    This morning the most read article on the BBC was this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg9y544wx3o

    "House prices plunge as council acts on second homes". Not just an urban problem.
    Sorry your point is what here exactly? Care to explain? A second home in wales is unlikely to be bought for investment purposes
    That you are wrong, because you suggested that most homes are empty because of probate, and wrong again when you swivelled and suggested it was due to investment.

    (It's because some people have loads of cash to splash, and the fact house prices tend to go up all the time makes them a safe place for that cash. Plus you get a nice house in Wales for a couple of long weekends a year).
    I come from a similar place to wales, cornwall....plenty of second homes but rarely left empty they were rented out when the owners didn't want to use them because else it wasn't financially viable.

    Only in london is it worth buying a property that can be left vacant for years
    OK, it's not residential, but shop landlords do it all the time. The reason that high streets everywhere are scarred with empty shops is that landlords can't/won't reduce their rentals to match demand. Either the terms of their banking arrangements forbid it, or they just don't want to admit their losses.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,667
    edited February 17
    I've just read Kemi's speech.
    It's fucking awful.
    If I were a Tory, I'd be in despair.
    To give just one of many examples: she berates political debate for focusing on trivia. Then she repeats a (fake) anecdote about chicken nuggets.
    Unbelievable.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    edited February 17

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    What you do not understand in Wales is that different authorities implemented the change differently with counties like Monmouth and Gwynedd imposes less than other countries especially in North Wales

    Hundreds of roads are being reverted back to 30mph no matter how you try to say otherwise

    Last time you mentioned "hundreds" it actually just meant roads that people like you had requested to be reverted back to 30mph. Now that the councils are reviewing them, hundreds is turning into handfuls.

    For example, Conwy got 149 requests and are reviewing only 15.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 44,398

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.
    With 93% of respondents favouring 30mph, yes, that data is in the article indeed.
    The ones who bothered to reply. And who spend mostd of their time driving *outside* where they live;.

    The tragedy of the commons.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 72,622

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    Are there no workhouses?
    Well, there's no surplus population.
  • Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    What you do not understand in Wales is that different authorities implemented the change differently with counties like Monmouth and Gwynedd imposes less than other countries especially in North Wales

    Hundreds of roads are being reverted back to 30mph no matter how you try to say otherwise

    Last time you mentioned "hundreds" it actually just meant roads that people like you had requested to be reverted back to 30mph. Now that the councils are reviewing them, hundreds is turning into handfuls.
    Because of the Councils agenda, not because that's the right thing to do.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.

    The problem is that consultations are dominated by people like you, to be frank. And the people who respond to them are routinely shocked when it turns out not everyone else is permanently online.
    1) how many residents are there to judge 1500
    2) How many respondents of 1500 reported actually ever use those roads

    I feel point 2 is important.....voting for restrictions on something you never use especially if you are part of the looney tune active travel community is an easy hit
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 97,446
    Omnium said:

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    Inevitable I guess. Given we seem to really have no armed forces at all I'm pretty keen that we up defence spending. The question is how much? To pluck a number out of thin air maybe I'd double it, but does that mean that the armed forces would just be doubly useless?

    That is the big issue in defence and areas wide beyond of course - the feeling that we're not getting our money's worth.

    One problem is how can the public accurately judge what we should be getting for our cash, as even if we did a better job it probably doesn't go as far as we'd think it should.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,683
    edited February 17

    Irwin Stelzer in yesterday's Times proposes that UK increase import of USA LNG gas to help stave off tariffs.

    Madness.

    US now a totally unreliable partner for vital energy supplies imho.

    It is being led by capricious fools who change their views every day. How can we possibly rely on them not turning against UK over some slight or other and cutting the supply?

    We have to get real.

    We are no longer in Kansas, Toto.

    Yes, USA will lose out to Canada.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6VdEaXATQ4
    The current state of diplomacy from Montreal.

    https://youtu.be/pUa6c7DNmQY?si=hnw3IsQTk91gu0L9
  • biggles said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Badenoch likens Conservatives to Trump’s Maga movement
    Tory leader says party is in ‘crisis’ and needs to reinvent itself after election defeat" (£)

    https://www.ft.com/content/54e43437-5a1d-41a9-9ec8-707d3993d2a8

    It’s like she actively wants people like me to never vote Tory again. Where does a liberal, “small c” conservative go if Reform repels them on immigration and the liberals repel them because of the Single Market?

    A hint to the Tories - you need us.
    At the moment, the remaining Conservatives don't see it that way.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 74,117

    I don't think what Clarkson has said is unsayable. It is eccentric though. The fact is that the costs to Russia, both human and financial, of Putin's war on Ukraine (vs. the gains) are beyond anything that Starmer's malice or incompetence have yet managed.

    If course it’s not ‘unsayable’.
    It’s just dumb. And it’s risible the Telegraph seem to be paying him to come up with such drivel; but it’s their money.
  • AnneJGPAnneJGP Posts: 3,209

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    If you are poor, three children gets you a chance of a 3-bed house with garden on social housing. Two children or fewer means you're probably stuck in a high rise 2 bed flat. No children, probably no points for social housing.

    Good evening everybody.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 29,793
    ...
    rcs1000 said:

    So do I. You cannot tell me that there's not a vast mountain of waste to cut through before a penny more in taxes on top of their current eye-watering levels is needed. Any more taxes and we won't have an economy to pay the taxes.

    This is the former Minister for Efficiency:
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-impossible-task-as-minister-for-efficiency/
    On my first day in office, I met the then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He told me that his most difficult problem was finding me an office. (He never did.) That set the tone of the Treasury’s approach to confronting waste.

    I did manage to cancel 33 government property leases in London, which saved about £1 billion (only £199 billion to go!). But the biggest termination of all, signed and sealed by two cabinet ministers and myself, was overturned after I left (102 Petty France, overlooking St James’s Park). Why?Simply because the civil servants didn’t want to lose the lovely view.

    Last week the government answered a written parliamentary question on the amount of overpayments made through Universal Credit, which amounts to nearly £6 billion a year. And yet at the same time they have introduced a controversial death tax on farmers which might generate a tenth of that. The truth is, it is much easier for the administrative machine to slam in a new tax than do the difficult work of running the state more effectively.


    And so it goes on. This organisation needs to get the Doge treatment and then some - and that's before we even start on the quangocracy.
    There's not a vast mountain of waste.

    There is a massive perceived mountain of waste. But not an actual massive mountain of waste.
    I don't agree. There are very real and concrete examples of massive toe curling waste in every Government department that I can think of. And that is, as I say, before you get to the quangos. Theodore Agnew who is quoted above (and he would know) estimates unproductive spending at £200bn, with the largest single portion of it (£50bn) fraud, of which he says £30bn is recoverable. These are not small figures - budgets have been reversed over less.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.

    The problem is that consultations are dominated by people like you, to be frank. And the people who respond to them are routinely shocked when it turns out not everyone else is permanently online.
    1) how many residents are there to judge 1500
    2) How many respondents of 1500 reported actually ever use those roads

    I feel point 2 is important.....voting for restrictions on something you never use especially if you are part of the looney tune active travel community is an easy hit
    You're absolutely right about point 2. I responded to one of the consultations to test whether it was possible to spoof it, and was successful despite not actually ever stating I live in the area (or indeed Wales).

    I guess lots of Daily Mail types will have done the same.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 97,446

    I've just read Kemi's speech.
    To give just one of many examples: she berates political debate for focusing on trivia. Then she repeats a (fake) anecdote about chicken nuggets.

    Unbelievable.

    On the contrary, very believable.

    It's not a time for soundbites either, she should feel the hand of history on her shoulders about that.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,683

    I've just read Kemi's speech.
    It's fucking awful.
    If I were a Tory, I'd be in despair.
    To give just one of many examples: she berates political debate for focusing on trivia. Then she repeats a (fake) anecdote about chicken nuggets.
    Unbelievable.

    Several posters assured me Starmer wouldn't be able to cope with her.
    Him and Nigel can't believe their luck.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    edited February 17

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    What you do not understand in Wales is that different authorities implemented the change differently with counties like Monmouth and Gwynedd imposes less than other countries especially in North Wales

    Hundreds of roads are being reverted back to 30mph no matter how you try to say otherwise

    Last time you mentioned "hundreds" it actually just meant roads that people like you had requested to be reverted back to 30mph. Now that the councils are reviewing them, hundreds is turning into handfuls.
    Because of the Councils agenda, not because that's the right thing to do.
    And that agenda is set by...

    It's pure NIMBYism, I accept, but it's basically what I predicted. Councillors are beholden to the parents who live on their street. Clever politics by the Welsh Government, neutralising all the abuse.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    Carnyx said:

    Pagan2 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Phil said:

    TimS said:

    eek said:

    Phil said:

    eek said:

    Eabhal said:

    Starting to think Corbyn was quite hard done by 👀

    "I would rather be governed by someone who would imprison or kill me if I criticised him than be governed by Keir Starmer"

    More from Jeremy Clarkson as we get it.

    The right in the UK has lost its mind.

    Tax dodging farmers like Clarkson really do hate Starmer.
    I think all farmers hate Starmer and Rachel From Accounts, along with most people who run businesses. The reason why privately held businesses (including farms) were inheritance tax free was because it enabled the next generation to continue the business as a viable entity, whereas if some c*ntish government made up of fuckwits who don't understand business insist on taxing the asset value causing it to become unviable.

    If the next generation decide not to do the hard work or take any further risks and realise the asset value and sell up then they pay tax in the form of CGT.

    There we are, thick people, I have explained why the IHT for family farms and private businesses is iniquitous and will damage the country generally.
    The problem is that farm land is now an IHT dodgy as demonstrated by Dyson and to a less extent Mr Clarkson who bought the land first and then discovered a decent idea for a TV series second.

    So the ideal solution is to work out how to solve things in a way that allows the farm to continue while the IHT dodgers get captured - problem is HMRC isn’t clever enough to do that so they implemented a different solution.
    I completely agree. Farms have been used as tax havens by some, but the percentage is tiny. HMRC could easily put in rules to distinguish between proper working farms and those that have been used as tax havens, but the current government would rather hammer farmers because they don't generally vote Labour.

    I would prefer them to tax people with massive public sector pension pots, or better still silver-spooned millionaire city lawyers and accountants that hide behind dodgy LLP structures where they pretend to be "partners" and "self employed" where most of them couldn't start a company for themselves if their featherbedded life depended on it.
    HMRC /already/ has rules that specify that you have to actually farm the land if you want to qualify for the 0-rating on IHT for farmland. This has not stopped people like Clarkson, Dyson et al from pouring their wealth into farmland in order to avoid paying IHT.
    The land has to be farmed - so if you have a tenant renting and farming the land from you that’s enough
    An obvious tweak (there are lots of obvious tweaks and I don’t know why they’ve not been done yet, but there’s still time) would have been to put a holding period test into the rules. If the land had been in the same ownership for say 20 years before inheritance then no IHT.

    Actually an even simpler tweak would be not to bother with IHT - it’s unpopular among almost the entire electorate - and move to annual land value taxation, with lower rates for agricultural land.

    Always worth reminding farmers though that if they gift the farm 7 years or more before death then it’s completely IHT free. They can still keep the house and even a portion of the farm up to the limit. But it’s mentally hard to do. I know a farmer who is still waiting to inherit in his 50s, and doesn’t feel he can make the changes and innovations he wants until the old boy has shuffled off to the next life.

    I completely agree that an annual land value tax would be simpler & fairer than IHT & a bunch of other weird land taxes, but unfortunately it’s wildly unpopular with the electorate: Taxing granny on her £2million four bed London home that she’s bouncing around in by herself is just not acceptable in any way.
    Its unpopular because people like me who rent will get it passed on to us
    The price you pay is set by demand for rental properties.
    And by making it more expensive for land/houses etc to sit there unused, you would increase the numbers of properties available to rent.

    Your price would almost certainly fall.
    Don't be daft properties are mostly empty because of things like probate
    Doesn't make sense. People usually - well, the ones who owned houses - bought then in their 30s and died in their 80s and the house would be empty for what, a year or two in a bad case because you can get on with clearing and tidying meantime. That's about 2 out of 50 years down to probate plus also things like clearing out and selling and lawyers with their wrists rammed up as high as their appendices.
    I was referring to properties mostly outside london, london is sort of different the rising house prices there make it feasible to buy a house and leave it empty....not so much most places.
  • Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.

    The problem is that consultations are dominated by people like you, to be frank. And the people who respond to them are routinely shocked when it turns out not everyone else is permanently online.
    1) how many residents are there to judge 1500
    2) How many respondents of 1500 reported actually ever use those roads

    I feel point 2 is important.....voting for restrictions on something you never use especially if you are part of the looney tune active travel community is an easy hit
    You're absolutely right about point 2. I responded to one of the consultations to test whether it was possible to spoof it, and was successful despite not actually ever stating I live in the area (or indeed Wales).

    I guess lots of Daily Mail types will have done the same.
    And yet only 7% of respondents did not support 30mph - and you claim that as proof that people want 20mph.

    I suppose 7% is a lot compared to what you're used to.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 74,117
    Andy_JS said:

    "Badenoch likens Conservatives to Trump’s Maga movement
    Tory leader says party is in ‘crisis’ and needs to reinvent itself after election defeat" (£)

    https://www.ft.com/content/54e43437-5a1d-41a9-9ec8-707d3993d2a8

    New leader it is, then ?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 97,446

    ...

    rcs1000 said:

    So do I. You cannot tell me that there's not a vast mountain of waste to cut through before a penny more in taxes on top of their current eye-watering levels is needed. Any more taxes and we won't have an economy to pay the taxes.

    This is the former Minister for Efficiency:
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-impossible-task-as-minister-for-efficiency/
    On my first day in office, I met the then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He told me that his most difficult problem was finding me an office. (He never did.) That set the tone of the Treasury’s approach to confronting waste.

    I did manage to cancel 33 government property leases in London, which saved about £1 billion (only £199 billion to go!). But the biggest termination of all, signed and sealed by two cabinet ministers and myself, was overturned after I left (102 Petty France, overlooking St James’s Park). Why?Simply because the civil servants didn’t want to lose the lovely view.

    Last week the government answered a written parliamentary question on the amount of overpayments made through Universal Credit, which amounts to nearly £6 billion a year. And yet at the same time they have introduced a controversial death tax on farmers which might generate a tenth of that. The truth is, it is much easier for the administrative machine to slam in a new tax than do the difficult work of running the state more effectively.


    And so it goes on. This organisation needs to get the Doge treatment and then some - and that's before we even start on the quangocracy.
    There's not a vast mountain of waste.

    There is a massive perceived mountain of waste. But not an actual massive mountain of waste.
    I don't agree. There are very real and concrete examples of massive toe curling waste in every Government department that I can think of. And that is, as I say, before you get to the quangos. Theodore Agnew who is quoted above (and he would know) estimates unproductive spending at £200bn, with the largest single portion of it (£50bn) fraud, of which he says £30bn is recoverable. These are not small figures - budgets have been reversed over less.
    I don't really know how much waste there is, at a good bet more than those decrying finding it think, and less than those who think pretty much everything is waste believe.

    There's a real danger of 'eliminating waste' being the new 'bankers bonuses' in funding everything we want to do.


  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 43,911

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    RIP the Labour client vote.
    In which case you must be lost in admiration of such a clearcut example of "country over party".
  • Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.

    The problem is that consultations are dominated by people like you, to be frank. And the people who respond to them are routinely shocked when it turns out not everyone else is permanently online.
    As usual you are trying to make a case when even the Welsh government have admitted there were errors and the issue has largely been resolved, as hundreds of roads across Wales are returning to 30mph and indeed on the ones in our County you do not even see children on them
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538
    edited February 17

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.

    The problem is that consultations are dominated by people like you, to be frank. And the people who respond to them are routinely shocked when it turns out not everyone else is permanently online.
    1) how many residents are there to judge 1500
    2) How many respondents of 1500 reported actually ever use those roads

    I feel point 2 is important.....voting for restrictions on something you never use especially if you are part of the looney tune active travel community is an easy hit
    You're absolutely right about point 2. I responded to one of the consultations to test whether it was possible to spoof it, and was successful despite not actually ever stating I live in the area (or indeed Wales).

    I guess lots of Daily Mail types will have done the same.
    And yet only 7% of respondents did not support 30mph - and you claim that as proof that people want 20mph.

    I suppose 7% is a lot compared to what you're used to.
    No, Pagan2 is quite right that the consultations can be brigaded by people who don't live in the local area. Probably English people who like driving fast on their holibobs.

    That's why there is such a dissonance between the consultation responses and the actions of councillors.
  • Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    What you do not understand in Wales is that different authorities implemented the change differently with counties like Monmouth and Gwynedd imposes less than other countries especially in North Wales

    Hundreds of roads are being reverted back to 30mph no matter how you try to say otherwise

    Last time you mentioned "hundreds" it actually just meant roads that people like you had requested to be reverted back to 30mph. Now that the councils are reviewing them, hundreds is turning into handfuls.
    Because of the Councils agenda, not because that's the right thing to do.
    And that agenda is set by...

    It's pure NIMBYism, I accept, but it's basically what I predicted. Councillors are beholden to the parents who live on their street.
    That agenda is set by whatever small-minded zealotry got people involved in politics, what the people on the street actually think is neither here nor there.

    Councillors aren't beholden to anyone. Far too many people don't give a shit about local elections and vote for whatever monkey in the right coloured rosette represents whoever they currently support, so those with an axe to grind who go into politics can push their own agenda without any pushback from the locals so long as their party remains popular.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    AnneJGP said:

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    If you are poor, three children gets you a chance of a 3-bed house with garden on social housing. Two children or fewer means you're probably stuck in a high rise 2 bed flat. No children, probably no points for social housing.

    Good evening everybody.
    The right to buy scheme was popular in part due to the shift in council allocation to need based rather than the list system...a lot of people saw their chances of ever getting a council house disappear in smoke as they didn't have the points so voted happily for them to be sold off
  • BattlebusBattlebus Posts: 386
    AnneJGP said:

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    If you are poor, three children gets you a chance of a 3-bed house with garden on social housing. Two children or fewer means you're probably stuck in a high rise 2 bed flat. No children, probably no points for social housing.

    Good evening everybody.
    Having dealt with some of these issues at the coal face, your comments seem somewhat out of place. 3 children doesn't mean 3 bedrooms as there are set calculations based on age and sex of the children. Secondly, it will also depend on whether you have ties to the community. You will get on a list but the position on the list will be determined by how many other families score higher than you. In areas of high demand, usually the South East, you may spend many years in (quite run down) temporary accommodation which is not covered by the Decent Homes Standard. Alternatively you'll be helped to find private rented accommodation which again won't be covered by the Decent Homes Standard (until the RRB comes into play.

    Many tenants playing the game you suggest they are playing come unstuck when faced with the reality of the UK's housing market. The solution is to build more.

    As an aside, no one ever thinks they can afford children. It's not an economic decision.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 53,587
    kinabalu said:

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    RIP the Labour client vote.
    In which case you must be lost in admiration of such a clearcut example of "country over party".
    He will always put the country [Mauritius] first.
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 64,468
    edited February 17
    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    What you do not understand in Wales is that different authorities implemented the change differently with counties like Monmouth and Gwynedd imposes less than other countries especially in North Wales

    Hundreds of roads are being reverted back to 30mph no matter how you try to say otherwise

    Last time you mentioned "hundreds" it actually just meant roads that people like you had requested to be reverted back to 30mph. Now that the councils are reviewing them, hundreds is turning into handfuls.

    For example, Conwy got 149 requests and are reviewing only 15.
    This is the actual list for Conwy

    https://www.rhyljournal.co.uk/news/24863319.kinmel-bay-roads-included-priority-list-reverting-back-30mph/

    And this

    https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/hundreds-roads-around-wales-set-30778180
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,470
    AnneJGP said:

    Look North doing a feature on child poverty.

    Nobody asking why people are having children they can't afford to look after.

    If you are poor, three children gets you a chance of a 3-bed house with garden on social housing. Two children or fewer means you're probably stuck in a high rise 2 bed flat. No children, probably no points for social housing.

    Good evening everybody.
    And that's why nobody is asking the question.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    kle4 said:

    ...

    rcs1000 said:

    So do I. You cannot tell me that there's not a vast mountain of waste to cut through before a penny more in taxes on top of their current eye-watering levels is needed. Any more taxes and we won't have an economy to pay the taxes.

    This is the former Minister for Efficiency:
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-impossible-task-as-minister-for-efficiency/
    On my first day in office, I met the then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He told me that his most difficult problem was finding me an office. (He never did.) That set the tone of the Treasury’s approach to confronting waste.

    I did manage to cancel 33 government property leases in London, which saved about £1 billion (only £199 billion to go!). But the biggest termination of all, signed and sealed by two cabinet ministers and myself, was overturned after I left (102 Petty France, overlooking St James’s Park). Why?Simply because the civil servants didn’t want to lose the lovely view.

    Last week the government answered a written parliamentary question on the amount of overpayments made through Universal Credit, which amounts to nearly £6 billion a year. And yet at the same time they have introduced a controversial death tax on farmers which might generate a tenth of that. The truth is, it is much easier for the administrative machine to slam in a new tax than do the difficult work of running the state more effectively.


    And so it goes on. This organisation needs to get the Doge treatment and then some - and that's before we even start on the quangocracy.
    There's not a vast mountain of waste.

    There is a massive perceived mountain of waste. But not an actual massive mountain of waste.
    I don't agree. There are very real and concrete examples of massive toe curling waste in every Government department that I can think of. And that is, as I say, before you get to the quangos. Theodore Agnew who is quoted above (and he would know) estimates unproductive spending at £200bn, with the largest single portion of it (£50bn) fraud, of which he says £30bn is recoverable. These are not small figures - budgets have been reversed over less.
    I don't really know how much waste there is, at a good bet more than those decrying finding it think, and less than those who think pretty much everything is waste believe.

    There's a real danger of 'eliminating waste' being the new 'bankers bonuses' in funding everything we want to do.


    I have worked on two public sector projects in my life....one was 7mill£ funding from dft, it was a complete waste of money as the functionality was already freely available. The second was for the nhs where there was a product designed that would run happily on a 20£ android phone that could be handed out at shift start....no the trusts wanted it to run on iphones costing a damn sight more and most got conveniently lost
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 97,446
    Nigelb said:

    Andy_JS said:

    "Badenoch likens Conservatives to Trump’s Maga movement
    Tory leader says party is in ‘crisis’ and needs to reinvent itself after election defeat" (£)

    https://www.ft.com/content/54e43437-5a1d-41a9-9ec8-707d3993d2a8

    New leader it is, then ?
    Have a rotating leadership of the party.

    In the 2023-24 session they sat about 213 days across about 1 and 1/3 of a year, each Tory MP could get 3-4 days as Leader in a similar session.
  • Nigelb said:

    "If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty":
    https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1891533180823380033

    Zelensky simply said no, but it's fairly clear that the US under Trump, just wants to grift what it can, and damn the consequences.

    Didn’t Britain owe about a third of its GDP to the US after WW2? Trump is acting in the finest American tradition.
    We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 97,446

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    So with Health and Welfare probably not going to make that amount, everyone else will probably have to make even more?

    The service will revolt presumably, or departments which already have cut waste will have to cut non-waste.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 43,911

    I've just read Kemi's speech.
    It's fucking awful.
    If I were a Tory, I'd be in despair.
    To give just one of many examples: she berates political debate for focusing on trivia. Then she repeats a (fake) anecdote about chicken nuggets.
    Unbelievable.

    She's incredibly immature.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,358
    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    Where exactly did local interests get a voice here? the authority concluded....no mention of asking people actually living there just idiot civil servants with a mission
    What typically happens is people who live in a traffic-calmed area overwhelmingly in favour, while those who drive through them (often from a neighbouring LTN) are opposed. Councillors are elected on small enough geographies for them to side with the local residents who elected them.

    Consultations != referendums, particularly when a twitter warrior from Edinburgh can make a submission.
    I repeat point me at a link where they asked the locals what they thought rather than authority decides...

    Now it may well be and I don't deny it that locals might say keep 20....however you don't get to proclaim they wanted it without actually fucking asking them
    Have a read through the article. They asked and 1,500 residents responded on 143 roads.

    The problem is that consultations are dominated by people like you, to be frank. And the people who respond to them are routinely shocked when it turns out not everyone else is permanently online.
    1) how many residents are there to judge 1500
    2) How many respondents of 1500 reported actually ever use those roads

    I feel point 2 is important.....voting for restrictions on something you never use especially if you are part of the looney tune active travel community is an easy hit
    You're absolutely right about point 2. I responded to one of the consultations to test whether it was possible to spoof it, and was successful despite not actually ever stating I live in the area (or indeed Wales).

    I guess lots of Daily Mail types will have done the same.
    And yet only 7% of respondents did not support 30mph - and you claim that as proof that people want 20mph.

    I suppose 7% is a lot compared to what you're used to.
    No, Pagan2 is quite right that the consultations can be brigaded by people who don't live in the local area. Probably English people who like driving fast on their holibobs.

    That's why there is such a dissonance between the consultation responses and the actions of councillors.
    Ah so don't get the support only get 7% supporting so must be brigading....what then was the point of the consultation then apart from a waste of money....get the answer you want implement your chosen solution....get the answer you don't want must be brigading implement your chosen solution.

    They wonder why we despise them
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 97,446
    biggles said:

    rcs1000 said:

    So do I. You cannot tell me that there's not a vast mountain of waste to cut through before a penny more in taxes on top of their current eye-watering levels is needed. Any more taxes and we won't have an economy to pay the taxes.

    This is the former Minister for Efficiency:
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-impossible-task-as-minister-for-efficiency/
    On my first day in office, I met the then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He told me that his most difficult problem was finding me an office. (He never did.) That set the tone of the Treasury’s approach to confronting waste.

    I did manage to cancel 33 government property leases in London, which saved about £1 billion (only £199 billion to go!). But the biggest termination of all, signed and sealed by two cabinet ministers and myself, was overturned after I left (102 Petty France, overlooking St James’s Park). Why?Simply because the civil servants didn’t want to lose the lovely view.

    Last week the government answered a written parliamentary question on the amount of overpayments made through Universal Credit, which amounts to nearly £6 billion a year. And yet at the same time they have introduced a controversial death tax on farmers which might generate a tenth of that. The truth is, it is much easier for the administrative machine to slam in a new tax than do the difficult work of running the state more effectively.


    And so it goes on. This organisation needs to get the Doge treatment and then some - and that's before we even start on the quangocracy.
    There's not a vast mountain of waste.

    There is a massive perceived mountain of waste. But not an actual massive mountain of waste.
    Yup. Of course the good news is that perceived problems only need to be perceived to have been solved. The lowest of low hanging fruit.
    In theory you can swing that argument, but people probably have to like and trust you to pull it off.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 64,216

    Adam Schwarz
    @AdamJSchwarz
    ·
    7h
    Badenoch:

    “Take a look at President Trump. He’s shown that sometimes you need that first stint in government to spot the problems, but it’s the second time around that you really know how to fix them.”

    Trump is dismantling US democracy and replacing it with authoritarianism.

    https://x.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1891448446579622072
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 9,538

    Eabhal said:

    Eabhal said:

    And while I'm on Wales, as predicted: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czepe606gn6o

    "Monmouthshire council said it had conducted a comprehensive review of 20mph speed limits after residents flagged up 143 roads where they felt a return to the 30mph limit was more appropriate.

    Four roads were selected to be reassessed, with the authority concluding the lower speed limits should remain in place."


    That's what happens when a national campaign meets local interests. People like to drive at 30mph past other people's children, but want everyone else to do 20mph past theirs. I'm sure Barty will deride that as NIMBYism, and he'd be right tbh.

    What you do not understand in Wales is that different authorities implemented the change differently with counties like Monmouth and Gwynedd imposes less than other countries especially in North Wales

    Hundreds of roads are being reverted back to 30mph no matter how you try to say otherwise

    Last time you mentioned "hundreds" it actually just meant roads that people like you had requested to be reverted back to 30mph. Now that the councils are reviewing them, hundreds is turning into handfuls.

    For example, Conwy got 149 requests and are reviewing only 15.
    This is the actual list for Conwy

    https://www.rhyljournal.co.uk/news/24863319.kinmel-bay-roads-included-priority-list-reverting-back-30mph/

    And this

    https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/hundreds-roads-around-wales-set-30778180
    Yep, exactly - though it looks like they have upped it from 15 roads to 20 "for a full assessment".

    And on your second link is just a list of roads that people have requested to be changed back, not those that are. In Monmouthshire, none of the 143 requests were accepted.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 11,208
    kle4 said:

    Omnium said:

    11% cut in government department budgets to pay for increase in defence spending !!!

    https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1891519026104356915?t=rZMOVRcI0On885wgIok88Q&s=19

    Inevitable I guess. Given we seem to really have no armed forces at all I'm pretty keen that we up defence spending. The question is how much? To pluck a number out of thin air maybe I'd double it, but does that mean that the armed forces would just be doubly useless?

    That is the big issue in defence and areas wide beyond of course - the feeling that we're not getting our money's worth.

    One problem is how can the public accurately judge what we should be getting for our cash, as even if we did a better job it probably doesn't go as far as we'd think it should.
    We're definitely not getting our money's worth. Public sector spending is nearly always so. I think it's generally true, and one of the reasons I have quite rightish (Tory) politics is that I think we can spend our money better than the government can.

    Defence-wise though I hope that attention is paid to what worked and what didn't the last two rounds of stupidity. For example I think it was of great benefit to have multiple bidders for aircraft design contracts. Maybe we didn't finish up immediately with the best, but we had the ability to adapt. Currently I'm not sure we could build a modern fighter entirely domestically, and even if we could then we'd no doubt find that some Wallace or some Gromit was unavailable.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 29,793
    edited February 17
    kle4 said:

    ...

    rcs1000 said:

    So do I. You cannot tell me that there's not a vast mountain of waste to cut through before a penny more in taxes on top of their current eye-watering levels is needed. Any more taxes and we won't have an economy to pay the taxes.

    This is the former Minister for Efficiency:
    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-impossible-task-as-minister-for-efficiency/
    On my first day in office, I met the then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He told me that his most difficult problem was finding me an office. (He never did.) That set the tone of the Treasury’s approach to confronting waste.

    I did manage to cancel 33 government property leases in London, which saved about £1 billion (only £199 billion to go!). But the biggest termination of all, signed and sealed by two cabinet ministers and myself, was overturned after I left (102 Petty France, overlooking St James’s Park). Why?Simply because the civil servants didn’t want to lose the lovely view.

    Last week the government answered a written parliamentary question on the amount of overpayments made through Universal Credit, which amounts to nearly £6 billion a year. And yet at the same time they have introduced a controversial death tax on farmers which might generate a tenth of that. The truth is, it is much easier for the administrative machine to slam in a new tax than do the difficult work of running the state more effectively.


    And so it goes on. This organisation needs to get the Doge treatment and then some - and that's before we even start on the quangocracy.
    There's not a vast mountain of waste.

    There is a massive perceived mountain of waste. But not an actual massive mountain of waste.
    I don't agree. There are very real and concrete examples of massive toe curling waste in every Government department that I can think of. And that is, as I say, before you get to the quangos. Theodore Agnew who is quoted above (and he would know) estimates unproductive spending at £200bn, with the largest single portion of it (£50bn) fraud, of which he says £30bn is recoverable. These are not small figures - budgets have been reversed over less.
    I don't really know how much waste there is, at a good bet more than those decrying finding it think, and less than those who think pretty much everything is waste believe.

    There's a real danger of 'eliminating waste' being the new 'bankers bonuses' in funding everything we want to do.
    But the 'lazy assumption' these days is not that there's a mountain of waste, it's wise shrewdies sagely nodding their heads and telling us we're going to have to just put up with the cost of the state and if we want lower taxes we'll have to sacrifice cancer surgery. It is glib, ignorant nonsense.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 64,216
    kinabalu said:

    I've just read Kemi's speech.
    It's fucking awful.
    If I were a Tory, I'd be in despair.
    To give just one of many examples: she berates political debate for focusing on trivia. Then she repeats a (fake) anecdote about chicken nuggets.
    Unbelievable.

    She's incredibly immature.
    Not ready for prime time. As I have said numerous times. It's Hague all over again. Only worse.

    Shame frankly because I think she has a lot to offer and a stint in one of the great offices of state in 2030s followed by running for leader and PM might well have worked out.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 97,446


    Adam Schwarz
    @AdamJSchwarz
    ·
    7h
    Badenoch:

    “Take a look at President Trump. He’s shown that sometimes you need that first stint in government to spot the problems, but it’s the second time around that you really know how to fix them.”

    Trump is dismantling US democracy and replacing it with authoritarianism.

    https://x.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1891448446579622072

    Careful thought is needed when using Trump as a positive example for much of the UK, even where he does something the average person might agree with (IDK, like stopping the printing of pennies).
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 11,208
    ydoethur said:


    Adam Schwarz
    @AdamJSchwarz
    ·
    7h
    Badenoch:

    “Take a look at President Trump. He’s shown that sometimes you need that first stint in government to spot the problems, but it’s the second time around that you really know how to fix them.”

    Trump is dismantling US democracy and replacing it with authoritarianism.

    https://x.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1891448446579622072

    Well, she's right.

    He realised first time around the problem was the administrative and legal system wouldn't allow him to follow his bizarre fantasies, so this time he's making sure he eliminates them quickly.
    Completely agree.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 125,613
    Alex Burghart is my MP now and a traditional Tory of the old school and good constituency MP but he was an early backer of Badenoch and is more interested being her Keith Joseph than leader. If she did go and lost a VONC, which is unlikely, it would be her Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride or Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philip who most likely replaced her
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