RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
No surprise at all that Liverpool gets PSG, that was inevitable.
Then two legs against Villa in QF Final, then a trip to Madrid in semi.
Every magician in the world will be proud how these draws are made 😆
All English clubs are in the same half of the draw, so not possible to get an all-English final.
Barcelona (the other draw Liverpool could have got) have got Benfica, then Dortmund or Lille, then probably Bayern Munich or Inter Milan.
Definitely seems the tougher of the two draws, for coming first.
Absolutely.
Also means Liverpool get an interesting week of Chelsea away, a Madrid team (home I think) in semi final, then Arsenal home. Huge 8 days in the two big competitions.
It also means if its a Liverpool v Arsenal Semi Final that will be happening at the same week as Liverpool v Arsenal in the Premier League, which as it stands could be the match that determines the League (by my reckoning if both teams drop same amount of points between now and then and then Liverpool beat Arsenal at Anfield, that makes them Champions there and then).
The league title effectively over in the coming week, with Liverpool goals against that awful Man City defence, and Arsenals attack (if we can call it that, it’s no more than a dry slap in a soap opera now) struggling against the Forest defence. I also have that toothless Arsenal not getting past Real Madrid. Not remotely in that tie.
Everton and Notts Forest actually have a better defence than Man City this season. Fact.
And if you want to see how the Benefits spend is broken down here is the menu of items you can claim for under statute. Split between means tested and non-means tested.
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Nowadays? Easy decision. Not smoking at all arond children is much the default position.
But seriously, congratulations.
Yeah, get that. What about a bunnet?
One of my grandfathers was killed in WW2 so I never met him. The other fought in WW1 and was very old when I became aware of him. I don't have much precedent to go on.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
Does anybody really give a shit what Musk says any more? Sure, he can make things, but he won't be remembered for his utterances.
Yes.
What Musk says matters for several reasons: *) His voice has a massive reach. He has over 200 million followers on Twix alone, and utterly coincidentally his utterances are pressed onto people who are not followers. *) He is widely admired, mostly by idiots. *) He has his fingers deep into the American government, and appears to be making them do what he wants.
It'd be similar to the first Viscount Rothermere not only owning newspapers, but being widely admired by a massive number of people, and being an official adviser to the government and running a government quango.
I think history will not view Musk favourably. It doesn't matter what his companies have done in space and EVs; the bad he is doing far outweighs those meagre positives. He'll be seen like a worse Fritz Haber - someone who helped combat starvation by developing a means of manufacturing nitrogen, but who was also known as the father of chemical warfare.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
That is a good win for the Tories.
The Kilmarnock seat is a loss for Labour and a gain by the SNP, but that's because you're going from STV for multiple seats to an AV by-election. The SNP topped the poll then and now: had the prior election been for one seat, the SNP would have won. So, in effect, it's really an SNP hold, with a fair swing to Labour.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So the government borrowing is...wait for....£12bn higher than forecast....another one of those £12bn blackholes.
Good morning
£118.2 billion so far this year !!!!!
This is a seminal moment. The Government has assumed that if it puts taxes up people will just grumble and pay them not act. Anecdotal evidence suggested this time it is different. Now the anecdotal evidence has become real. The Government can no longer put up taxes and get the OBR to assume they will generate net new money. The cuts will need to start shortly or Sterling will begin to fall.
It is interesting that the hope that Farage and Reform get in power maybe the only thing to save the UK economy from immediate collapse.
Yet we also have a national surplus it was reported today just not as much as expected so why are we still borrowing?
The unions and Labour left will block spending cuts anyway and demand higher taxes on the rich and big corporations instead.
Reform are basically Trussite or tax cuts and spending for all, though Farage might move to a more insurance based model for healthcare to replace the NHS
We don't have a national surplus, its purely seasonal, January is always in surplus as that's when a hefty swathe of taxes are paid all at once. January is but one month of the year and in the past now, we need borrowing for the rest of the year as we have a deficit.
The 'surplus' for January was well below 'expectations' and means this year will have even more borrowing than forecast.
Which if true means just more tax from Labour
Just the same as Rishi's Tories. Tax has been going up for years.
I would like to see a party that proposes cutting the state expenditure and thus enabling cutting taxes, but any cut is vociferously opposed.
Including by you, bitching and crying about cutting welfare like the winter fuel allowance.
The Tories cut the additional rate income tax, took the lowest earners out of income tax with the LDs and cut inheritance tax.
Osborne also cut spending except for the NHS and overseas aid, vociferously opposed by Labour when doing so and cut corporation tax. Labour has already axed WFA for most pensioners as you say even if all the opposition parties, not just the Tories, opposed it
Osborne cut spending in some areas, yes, which is why he was able to reduce the deficit.
Sadly in recent years the Tories have turned their back on Osborne and have been increasing spending rapidly, and opposing any cuts even that Labour makes.
You can't have your cake and eat it too, if you want to cut spending then you need to cut expenditure which means things like abolishing the triple lock, freezing pensions, cutting the WFA etc
Until you're ready to be serious about cutting expenditure, don't moan about taxes.
Badenoch has said she will means test the triple lock now, it is the LDs and Reform most committed to keeping the triple lock as now
Why is means testing the WFA the work of Satan but means testing the triple lock a brilliant idea?
Easier to scrap the triple lock and link to average earnings.
Problem with means testing is the cost of doing so.
That's one problem, but the bigger one is the effect it has on people's behaviour.
If saving for your retirement just means you are going to get less from the state in decades to come, why bother saving?
(Which was the logic behind gradually making the core state pension drift upwards over a few decades, which the triple lock does in an era of reasonably stable inflation. It doesn't tell us when to step off that escalator, and it doesn't handle spikes like the one we have just had well. But hey ho.)
Surely the logic of saving for your retirement is that the state pension is a bare minimum and you need to save over and above that to have a better standard of living ?
I am not saying you are wrong, I am interested in you going further into the rationale for that view.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Many congratulations and no, smoking a pipe is not mandatory
Indeed when our first grandchild arrived my daughter demanded I stopped smoking which I did [very difficult battle] but now 22 years later it was the best decision for my health ever made
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
That is a good win for the Tories.
The Kilmarnock seat is a loss for Labour and a gain by the SNP, but that's because you're going from STV for multiple seats to an AV by-election. The SNP topped the poll then and now: has the prior election been for one seat, the SNP would have won. So, in effect, it's really an SNP hold, with a fair swing to Labour.
Thank goodness someone on PB who isn't a Scot is interpreting the local election system in Scotland properly.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Colchester has a Labour MP, on that swing the Conservatives would take the parliamentary seat too
Do you really have to do this every other day for four and a half years, before “who do you prefer as Prime Minister” “Who do you prefer to run the economy” wins the General Election? 🤦♀️
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
It’s a tax levied on income. It’s an income tax.
Of course it is an income tax and needs reducing for all workers
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So the government borrowing is...wait for....£12bn higher than forecast....another one of those £12bn blackholes.
Good morning
£118.2 billion so far this year !!!!!
This is a seminal moment. The Government has assumed that if it puts taxes up people will just grumble and pay them not act. Anecdotal evidence suggested this time it is different. Now the anecdotal evidence has become real. The Government can no longer put up taxes and get the OBR to assume they will generate net new money. The cuts will need to start shortly or Sterling will begin to fall.
It is interesting that the hope that Farage and Reform get in power maybe the only thing to save the UK economy from immediate collapse.
Yet we also have a national surplus it was reported today just not as much as expected so why are we still borrowing?
The unions and Labour left will block spending cuts anyway and demand higher taxes on the rich and big corporations instead.
Reform are basically Trussite or tax cuts and spending for all, though Farage might move to a more insurance based model for healthcare to replace the NHS
We don't have a national surplus, its purely seasonal, January is always in surplus as that's when a hefty swathe of taxes are paid all at once. January is but one month of the year and in the past now, we need borrowing for the rest of the year as we have a deficit.
The 'surplus' for January was well below 'expectations' and means this year will have even more borrowing than forecast.
Which if true means just more tax from Labour
Just the same as Rishi's Tories. Tax has been going up for years.
I would like to see a party that proposes cutting the state expenditure and thus enabling cutting taxes, but any cut is vociferously opposed.
Including by you, bitching and crying about cutting welfare like the winter fuel allowance.
The Tories cut the additional rate income tax, took the lowest earners out of income tax with the LDs and cut inheritance tax.
Osborne also cut spending except for the NHS and overseas aid, vociferously opposed by Labour when doing so and cut corporation tax. Labour has already axed WFA for most pensioners as you say even if all the opposition parties, not just the Tories, opposed it
Osborne cut spending in some areas, yes, which is why he was able to reduce the deficit.
Sadly in recent years the Tories have turned their back on Osborne and have been increasing spending rapidly, and opposing any cuts even that Labour makes.
You can't have your cake and eat it too, if you want to cut spending then you need to cut expenditure which means things like abolishing the triple lock, freezing pensions, cutting the WFA etc
Until you're ready to be serious about cutting expenditure, don't moan about taxes.
Badenoch has said she will means test the triple lock now, it is the LDs and Reform most committed to keeping the triple lock as now
Presumably that means freezing the state pension but triple-locking pension credits (which are, of course, means tested). It's not a bad idea but it would hurt millions of marginal cases. I don't understand why cliff-edges are necessary in the computer age. Can't there be a smoother transition from one to the other?
You could also scrap National Insurance credits so you only get the state pension with sufficient National Insurance contributions, otherwise you only get pension credits
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
You really think, those were free and fair votes, conducted by Russia?
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
Are we at the analogy of the point where they stopped being useful idiots for Mussolini in the 1920s?
"Trump got things done very quickly after his inauguration" (despite most of it being illegal) will be the 2024 "Mussolini made the trains run on time".
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Z was elected on a platform of normalising relations with Russia and stamping out corruption. Epic fail on both scores. However, I think he'd be in with a fighting chance in an election as the opposition would obviously be The Chocolate King who is a known and not much liked quantity. Zaluzhny and Klitschko don't have the media owning oligarch backing which is essential to get anywhere in Ukrainian politics. Z doesn't need oligarch backing as he is one now. That's why he's dispensed with and locked up Kolomoisky who was so instrumental in propelling Z into the Marinisky Palace.
Excellent post. I'm not sure Kolomoisky is finished though. Z++ jailed him but for full effect they'd have had him whacked.
The calling of an election itself would weaken Z insofar as choices he has made as a war leader would be questioned.
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Congratulations! You'd better invest in lots of bags of Werther's Originals
My children have two granddads, one granny and one grandma - all personal choice of the grandparents in question.
My eldest son has a particularly strong bond with his maternal granddad; there's just a strong innate connection there as they share curiousity about the world, puzzles, logic etc. It's a wonderful thing to see. Grandparenting looks like a fun job
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Trump orders famous Resolute Desk removed from the Oval Office for restoration—after Elon Musk’s son wiped his nose on it
According to The New York Post, Trump, known for his extreme germophobia, was reportedly disgusted after witnessing the incident.
The Resolute Desk has been used by many U.S. presidents, including John F. Kennedy. It was originally a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States in 1880 and was placed in the Oval Office in 1961.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
The unifying character here is the desire to lick the boot of authority. Authoritarians will latch onto to whichever self appointed “strong leader” is most appealing at a given time & Putin fits the bill perfectly.
They all want to break the British state to promote their revolutionary aims. Ironically precisely the sort of thing the Conservative Party was created to prevent.
Not at all. All Reform would do is restore the pre-Blairite constitutional settlement when life was far better. Blair's changes were far reaching and enormously damaging.
What do you mean by pre-Blairite constitutional settlement? He did a lot on the constitution but reversing most of the ones I can think of would surely be either near-impossible or very esoteric?
- Scottish and Welsh devolution - Good Friday agreement - abolishing (most) hereditary peers - Supreme Court and judicial appointments committee
The only 2 that seem to chime with the Reform position would be the human rights act, which was repeatedly slated for scrapping under the Tories then abandoned, and the Lisbon Treaty which is irrelevant now given we’ve left the EU.
The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 The Human Rights Act of 1998
Both are wholly pernicious and need to, and I think will go.
Bank of England independence also has a constitutional bearing, and has been equally harmful, whilst patently failing in its stated aim to avoid economic shocks. The lack of political accountability has actually led to worse and more reckless monetary policy.
I do wonder when the Reformy types work out that all they need is different judges. Even MAGA got there in the end.
“Judge rules that drowning boat immigrants is protecting their human rights.”
Isn’t there a “right to die” bill currently in parliament? 😇
Are we at the analogy of the point where they stopped being useful idiots for Mussolini in the 1920s?
"Trump got things done very quickly after his inauguration" (despite most of it being illegal) will be the 2024 "Mussolini made the trains run on time".
(Good morning everyone.)
I wonder at which point, we get the equivalent of someone proclaiming at CPAC:
“Heil Hitler! I want the world to know that I am a Jew hater!”
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
No fucking idea. When I lived in Russia, he was the Russophone David Mitchell and was never off NTV. He was very tight with Solovyov so he was obviously regime adjacent at that time.
Remember in our system Parliament can overrule any judicial judgment with primary legislation, regardless of whether it came from the Supreme Court or the House of Lords. Blair did not change that. Our elected representatives should stop blaming others bodies for their incompetence and actually do their jobs. Likewise, people like @Luckyguy1983 should stop importing American issues which do not exist in this country. If you don’t like the law, Parliament can change the law. It just doesn’t.
You're right, it can. It should. And it may well do after 2029. And I will absolutely be here for it
AI doesn’t think. It predicts. AI doesn’t understand. It associates. AI doesn’t create. It remixes. The real danger isn’t AI becoming human. It’s humans mistaking AI for human.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
The unifying character here is the desire to lick the boot of authority. Authoritarians will latch onto to whichever self appointed “strong leader” is most appealing at a given time & Putin fits the bill perfectly.
They all want to break the British state to promote their revolutionary aims. Ironically precisely the sort of thing the Conservative Party was created to prevent.
Not at all. All Reform would do is restore the pre-Blairite constitutional settlement when life was far better. Blair's changes were far reaching and enormously damaging.
What do you mean by pre-Blairite constitutional settlement? He did a lot on the constitution but reversing most of the ones I can think of would surely be either near-impossible or very esoteric?
- Scottish and Welsh devolution - Good Friday agreement - abolishing (most) hereditary peers - Supreme Court and judicial appointments committee
The only 2 that seem to chime with the Reform position would be the human rights act, which was repeatedly slated for scrapping under the Tories then abandoned, and the Lisbon Treaty which is irrelevant now given we’ve left the EU.
The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 The Human Rights Act of 1998
Both are wholly pernicious and need to, and I think will go.
Bank of England independence also has a constitutional bearing, and has been equally harmful, whilst patently failing in its stated aim to avoid economic shocks. The lack of political accountability has actually led to worse and more reckless monetary policy.
I do wonder when the Reformy types work out that all they need is different judges. Even MAGA got there in the end.
“Judge rules that drowning boat immigrants is protecting their human rights.”
I find this rather silly response somewhat at odds with your NU10K hobby horse, given that the judiciary are a key example of the type.
Judges that were not working to undermine the aims of democratically elected Governments (including this one) would be great, but we must first: 1. Remove the basis in law for the dangerous and grotesque verdicts and encroachments into policy that we're seeing 2. Ensure that the top judge is once again a member of the Government and therefore accountable to the public
With all due respect you don’t understand the legal system at all if you think re-forming the appellate committee of the House of Lords will change ANYTHING. The judges are the same, regardless of whether they sit in the Lords or in the Supreme Court. At the end of the day Parliament is still sovereign and judges can only interpret inconsistencies in the law. If you want less “judicial activism” then Parliament should write better and clearer laws. The commons literally leaves gaping gaps in legislation because they are lazy for judges to fix. All you are spouting is populist nonsense aboutall the solutions being easy when they are not. As usual the actual answer is hard work and actual accountability of our elected representatives.
Although it was nice when Lord High Chancellor was an important role - if you think of the likes of Hailsham they were respected elder statesmen.
Charlie Faulkner not so much. Has he resigned yet?
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Colchester has a Labour MP, on that swing the Conservatives would take the parliamentary seat too
Same for the Lillie/Hammersmith and Fulham result.
Chelsea and Fulham would certainly return to the Tories too yes
My best guess is that the London local elections for 2026 will be quite good for the Conservatives, on the basis of by-election resutls.
Barnet, Enfield, Westminster, Croydon, should all be gains, and the Brent North wards will likely swing back heavily, as well.
Yes wealthy Londoners can vote Tory to cut their taxes still but are far too snobbish and moderate on immigration to vote for oiks like Farage and Anderson and Reform so in most of London, except the very outer suburban Essex and Kent borders and LD Richmond and Kingston, the Tories remain the main alternative to Labour
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
Statements like "The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake," throws the rest of the post into doubt.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester is the 216th Conservative target seat, on that by election swing Kemi would become PM
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
May be we should just have a twitter tax?
More taxes.The perfect solution to every problem!!!!
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
But what about women who take a break to bring up their little Tyler-Kade's or Chantelle ?
The "everyone's a victim" brigade would be up in arms and getting their airing on the 6 o'clock news.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester is the 216th Conservative target seat, on that by election swing Kemi would become PM
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
That attack on stay at home mums would go down about as well as Kemi's triple lock tinkering is probably about to
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
Statements like "The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake," throws the rest of the post into doubt.
Why bother with referenda which show 93%+ in favour of whatever the Dear Leader proposes, which are obviously fake?
Would it not be more plausible if you fabricated a vote like, say, 68%, a big margin, but within the bounds of possibility?
So the government borrowing is...wait for....£12bn higher than forecast....another one of those £12bn blackholes.
Good morning
£118.2 billion so far this year !!!!!
This is a seminal moment. The Government has assumed that if it puts taxes up people will just grumble and pay them not act. Anecdotal evidence suggested this time it is different. Now the anecdotal evidence has become real. The Government can no longer put up taxes and get the OBR to assume they will generate net new money. The cuts will need to start shortly or Sterling will begin to fall.
It is interesting that the hope that Farage and Reform get in power maybe the only thing to save the UK economy from immediate collapse.
Yet we also have a national surplus it was reported today just not as much as expected so why are we still borrowing?
The unions and Labour left will block spending cuts anyway and demand higher taxes on the rich and big corporations instead.
Reform are basically Trussite or tax cuts and spending for all, though Farage might move to a more insurance based model for healthcare to replace the NHS
We don't have a national surplus, its purely seasonal, January is always in surplus as that's when a hefty swathe of taxes are paid all at once. January is but one month of the year and in the past now, we need borrowing for the rest of the year as we have a deficit.
The 'surplus' for January was well below 'expectations' and means this year will have even more borrowing than forecast.
Which if true means just more tax from Labour
Just the same as Rishi's Tories. Tax has been going up for years.
I would like to see a party that proposes cutting the state expenditure and thus enabling cutting taxes, but any cut is vociferously opposed.
Including by you, bitching and crying about cutting welfare like the winter fuel allowance.
The Tories cut the additional rate income tax, took the lowest earners out of income tax with the LDs and cut inheritance tax.
Osborne also cut spending except for the NHS and overseas aid, vociferously opposed by Labour when doing so and cut corporation tax. Labour has already axed WFA for most pensioners as you say even if all the opposition parties, not just the Tories, opposed it
Osborne cut spending in some areas, yes, which is why he was able to reduce the deficit.
Sadly in recent years the Tories have turned their back on Osborne and have been increasing spending rapidly, and opposing any cuts even that Labour makes.
You can't have your cake and eat it too, if you want to cut spending then you need to cut expenditure which means things like abolishing the triple lock, freezing pensions, cutting the WFA etc
Until you're ready to be serious about cutting expenditure, don't moan about taxes.
Badenoch has said she will means test the triple lock now, it is the LDs and Reform most committed to keeping the triple lock as now
Why is means testing the WFA the work of Satan but means testing the triple lock a brilliant idea?
Easier to scrap the triple lock and link to average earnings.
Problem with means testing is the cost of doing so.
That's one problem, but the bigger one is the effect it has on people's behaviour.
If saving for your retirement just means you are going to get less from the state in decades to come, why bother saving?
(Which was the logic behind gradually making the core state pension drift upwards over a few decades, which the triple lock does in an era of reasonably stable inflation. It doesn't tell us when to step off that escalator, and it doesn't handle spikes like the one we have just had well. But hey ho.)
Surely the logic of saving for your retirement is that the state pension is a bare minimum and you need to save over and above that to have a better standard of living ?
I am not saying you are wrong, I am interested in you going further into the rationale for that view.
Pretty much that.
Expanding a bit, means tests have the effect of being utterly brutal on those just above the magic line. See also the weird consequences of working a bit longer or for a bit more pay than the 16 hours/minimum wave cutoff.
Long story short- as a nation, we're not actually going to leave old people destitute, because we're British not American. And if we're going to have that at the level of pension credit plus the associated goodies, there's probably a better response in the economy to just give that to everyone and get it back from the better off via taxation.
(And I say that as someone who will probably be worse off in that setup.)
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Good result for the Tories. Given that LLG all declined sharply, is this evidence of tactical voting against Reform? More evidence from similar byelections is needed of course.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
That attack on stay at home mums would go down about as well as Kemi's triple lock tinkering is probably about to
It isn't an attack on stay at home mums, many of whom will still be working part time and still making NI contributions anyway and the rest largely with high earning husbands with fat pensions. In any case child benefit can be increased from the savings made
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Realistically nobody my age (early 30s) will be getting a state pension anyway
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
I'm a bit in two minds about that. Held under duress, certainly. But in some of the ORDLO areas, particularly in the Donbas, there were quite a few people who wanted to be in Russia. On the other hand, in some of the others (particularly, say, Zaporizhia), the referendums would not have reflected popular sentiment.
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Nowadays? Easy decision. Not smoking at all arond children is much the default position.
But seriously, congratulations.
Yeah, get that. What about a bunnet?
One of my grandfathers was killed in WW2 so I never met him. The other fought in WW1 and was very old when I became aware of him. I don't have much precedent to go on.
Don’t forget the open packet of Werthers Originals for them to choke on
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester is the 216th Conservative target seat, on that by election swing Kemi would become PM
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester, since 1997 roughly under current boundaries, has had an MP from the following:
Lib Dem: 18 years Conservative: 9 years Labour: 1 year
So it wouldn't be a 'reversion to normal' at all. It's only had a Conservative MP from 2015 until 2024, when they had a majority/near majority.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester is the 216th Conservative target seat, on that by election swing Kemi would become PM
And on the swings in the Hammersmith & Fulham or East Ayrshire seats, Kemi would lose seats.
No, on the Hammersmith and Fulham swing she would also gain Chelsea and Fulham and many more seats from Labour even if she also lost a few to Reform and the LDs
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Realistically nobody my age (early 30s) will be getting a state pension anyway
Fascinated to see how it'll shake out for me. I am more or less the oldest millenial
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester is the 216th Conservative target seat, on that by election swing Kemi would become PM
And on the swings in the Hammersmith & Fulham or East Ayrshire seats, Kemi would lose seats.
Colchester was Lib Dem '97-2010, Con 2015-2019. Since 1945 it has been won by Labour in .... 2024 It will definitely be far higher than 216th on the Conservative target list at the next GE.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
I'm a bit in two minds about that. Held under duress, certainly. But in some of the ORDLO areas, particularly in the Donbas, there were quite a few people who wanted to be in Russia. On the other hand, in some of the others (particularly, say, Zaporizhia), the referendums would not have reflected popular sentiment.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
Surely if on state pension and working you cannot get credits.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
It's pretty easy. Council tax accounts for about £50 billion, roughly the same as defence spending. Increase it from 0.5% of total house values to 0.75%.
Alternatively, revenge on Amazon for Bond. The UK gets about 5 billion packages a year delivered to homes. £2 flat tax on that, save the high street etc etc
Ha!
So you are going to raise a highly visible tax on housing. And that will be easy?
And as an encore, massively increase the price of tat?
The Evul Chav Scum Racist hordes will be revolting over that last one.
There is a simpler way
Increase standard rate to 25% reduce or abolish ni for workers and reduce the subsidises for evs which in the main goes to wealthy car buyers
You are in Facebook la la land. Abolishing NI would cost £170 billion. You'd need to increase income tax by 64%, or from 20% to 33% on the basic rate and 66% on the higher rate just to breakeven.
I can't find any comprehensive stats on the total value of EV subsidies, but the OBR reckon the Conservatives spent £3 billion over 14 years on it. That's less than 1% of the annualised cost of an increase in defence spending to 3% of GDP.
So do it, increase Income Tax by enough to replace NI and level the playing field.
That would still be (net) a tax cut for those working for a living while being a tax rise on those who are not doing so.
NI is an Income Tax not paid by everyone, it is worse than Income Tax. Taxes should be low but consistently paid by everyone, equalising tax rates so everyone who earns the same amount pays the same tax rate is to be welcomed not warned against.
No, NI is not an income tax. It is used to determine eligibility for the state pension and JSA now too and should be extended to increasingly fund the NHS and social care not income tax.
If anything we need more National Insurance and less Income Tax
Come on, this is factually incorrect as anyone not paying NI at a point can get credits, even if you're claiming £0.00 of job seekers allowance as I would be if out of work.
So scrap the NI credits (which the second Wilson government introduced to expand welfare dependency) so you can't get state pension unless you have made enough NI contributions in work, otherwise you only get pension credit
Realistically nobody my age (early 30s) will be getting a state pension anyway
I think, for young people, starting in work, the govt would be far better off putting something like 5 grand into an S&P tracker and leaving it for them for 40 years to fund their retirement.
We cannot have a situation where people like me will get a pension in a few years time, on the basis that I have worked all my life and paid for others pensions so it is my turn, which is fair enough but then the next generation have to pay for ours and won;t get one at all.
How can young people support capitalism and a capitalist system if they cannot have a stake in it and it only takes from them.
It needs to be sustainable and it needs to be there for the next generations too.
I am now a granddad for the first time as of 8 this morning. Daughter has had a boy. Both seem to be fine.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
Nowadays? Easy decision. Not smoking at all arond children is much the default position.
But seriously, congratulations.
Yeah, get that. What about a bunnet?
One of my grandfathers was killed in WW2 so I never met him. The other fought in WW1 and was very old when I became aware of him. I don't have much precedent to go on.
Don’t forget the open packet of Werthers Originals for them to choke on
My granddad could make a polo mint last over an hour.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester is the 216th Conservative target seat, on that by election swing Kemi would become PM
And on the swings in the Hammersmith & Fulham or East Ayrshire seats, Kemi would lose seats.
No, on the Hammersmith and Fulham swing she would also gain Chelsea and Fulham and many more seats from Labour even if she also lost a few to Reform and the LDs
There were 2 by-elections in H&F. In one, the Tory vote was up 4.9pp. In the other, it was down 5.5. So, on average, they lost vote share. However, you are right that the vagaries of FPTP mean they could gain net seats on that.
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
The unifying character here is the desire to lick the boot of authority. Authoritarians will latch onto to whichever self appointed “strong leader” is most appealing at a given time & Putin fits the bill perfectly.
They all want to break the British state to promote their revolutionary aims. Ironically precisely the sort of thing the Conservative Party was created to prevent.
Not at all. All Reform would do is restore the pre-Blairite constitutional settlement when life was far better. Blair's changes were far reaching and enormously damaging.
What do you mean by pre-Blairite constitutional settlement? He did a lot on the constitution but reversing most of the ones I can think of would surely be either near-impossible or very esoteric?
- Scottish and Welsh devolution - Good Friday agreement - abolishing (most) hereditary peers - Supreme Court and judicial appointments committee
The only 2 that seem to chime with the Reform position would be the human rights act, which was repeatedly slated for scrapping under the Tories then abandoned, and the Lisbon Treaty which is irrelevant now given we’ve left the EU.
The Constitutional Reform Act of 2005 The Human Rights Act of 1998
Both are wholly pernicious and need to, and I think will go.
Bank of England independence also has a constitutional bearing, and has been equally harmful, whilst patently failing in its stated aim to avoid economic shocks. The lack of political accountability has actually led to worse and more reckless monetary policy.
I do wonder when the Reformy types work out that all they need is different judges. Even MAGA got there in the end.
“Judge rules that drowning boat immigrants is protecting their human rights.”
I find this rather silly response somewhat at odds with your NU10K hobby horse, given that the judiciary are a key example of the type.
Judges that were not working to undermine the aims of democratically elected Governments (including this one) would be great, but we must first: 1. Remove the basis in law for the dangerous and grotesque verdicts and encroachments into policy that we're seeing 2. Ensure that the top judge is once again a member of the Government and therefore accountable to the public
With all due respect you don’t understand the legal system at all if you think re-forming the appellate committee of the House of Lords will change ANYTHING. The judges are the same, regardless of whether they sit in the Lords or in the Supreme Court. At the end of the day Parliament is still sovereign and judges can only interpret inconsistencies in the law. If you want less “judicial activism” then Parliament should write better and clearer laws. The commons literally leaves gaping gaps in legislation because they are lazy for judges to fix. All you are spouting is populist nonsense about all the solutions being easy when they are not. As usual the actual answer is hard work and actual accountability of our elected representatives.
No, it is you who is spouting lazy nonsense, lazy and innacurate. UK parliaments cannot do anything about the ECHR, whose authority is enshrined in the Human Rights Act, and now that it interprets its own remit using the living instrument doctrine, there is virtually no Government action that it could not strike down using a human rights pretext. We can do nothing except leaving the ECHR and repealing the Human Rights Act which is what I'm proposing.
The UK's most senior judge being part of the UK cabinet introduces a democratic accountability into the system which has now gone, and contributes to a wide sense that judges can do what they like. Personally I think parliamentary statutes are plenty clear enough, but we previously relied upon a system where judges didn't rip the piss. No judge in the 1990s would have allowed a paedophile to avoid deportation due to the negative impact that it would have on his child for example.
Ed Davey, Liberal Democrat leader, says there should be a new tax on digital services to increase defence immediately, with cross-party talks on going further to reaching 3% of GDP on defence
Ah, the broadband tax rolls around. Again.
May be we should just have a twitter tax?
More taxes.The perfect solution to every problem!!!!
Think about it as a nudge strategy to reduce usage of a product with significant negative externalities
Out of interest, as I was agog reading the warfare on here last night, one of my Labour mates sent me some screengrabs of one of the Momentum lot who came into and then left the Labour Party with Corbyn. No surprise, a major proponent of the Putin view of the world because Zelenskyy is "not allowing open democracy", and is "known to have ordered the killing of Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine like some sort of genocide"
The trot left and the Trump/Farage alt-right are marching in lockstep. They both hate each other for ideological reasons yet are proudly speaking the same FUD for ideological reasons.
Fascinating...
It's a bit of a headscratcher. Zelensky is a native Russian speaker and only learned Ukranian as an adult.
It's funny reading BBC articles from 2019. Lots of worries about Zelensky being a Russian puppet, and he did better in the Russian-speaking/eastern parts of Ukraine than he did elsewhere. He was also elected on an anti-corruption platform, and was pushing for a ceasefire in Donbas etc.
Have you got some links for the Russian puppet suggestion? That's interesting if British regime media was putting that out in 2019, when Zelensky was elected.
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
The referendums were fake.
I'm a bit in two minds about that. Held under duress, certainly. But in some of the ORDLO areas, particularly in the Donbas, there were quite a few people who wanted to be in Russia. On the other hand, in some of the others (particularly, say, Zaporizhia), the referendums would not have reflected popular sentiment.
So the government borrowing is...wait for....£12bn higher than forecast....another one of those £12bn blackholes.
Good morning
£118.2 billion so far this year !!!!!
This is a seminal moment. The Government has assumed that if it puts taxes up people will just grumble and pay them not act. Anecdotal evidence suggested this time it is different. Now the anecdotal evidence has become real. The Government can no longer put up taxes and get the OBR to assume they will generate net new money. The cuts will need to start shortly or Sterling will begin to fall.
It is interesting that the hope that Farage and Reform get in power maybe the only thing to save the UK economy from immediate collapse.
Yet we also have a national surplus it was reported today just not as much as expected so why are we still borrowing?
The unions and Labour left will block spending cuts anyway and demand higher taxes on the rich and big corporations instead.
Reform are basically Trussite or tax cuts and spending for all, though Farage might move to a more insurance based model for healthcare to replace the NHS
We don't have a national surplus, its purely seasonal, January is always in surplus as that's when a hefty swathe of taxes are paid all at once. January is but one month of the year and in the past now, we need borrowing for the rest of the year as we have a deficit.
The 'surplus' for January was well below 'expectations' and means this year will have even more borrowing than forecast.
Which if true means just more tax from Labour
Just the same as Rishi's Tories. Tax has been going up for years.
I would like to see a party that proposes cutting the state expenditure and thus enabling cutting taxes, but any cut is vociferously opposed.
Including by you, bitching and crying about cutting welfare like the winter fuel allowance.
The Tories cut the additional rate income tax, took the lowest earners out of income tax with the LDs and cut inheritance tax.
Osborne also cut spending except for the NHS and overseas aid, vociferously opposed by Labour when doing so and cut corporation tax. Labour has already axed WFA for most pensioners as you say even if all the opposition parties, not just the Tories, opposed it
Osborne cut spending in some areas, yes, which is why he was able to reduce the deficit.
Sadly in recent years the Tories have turned their back on Osborne and have been increasing spending rapidly, and opposing any cuts even that Labour makes.
You can't have your cake and eat it too, if you want to cut spending then you need to cut expenditure which means things like abolishing the triple lock, freezing pensions, cutting the WFA etc
Until you're ready to be serious about cutting expenditure, don't moan about taxes.
Badenoch has said she will means test the triple lock now, it is the LDs and Reform most committed to keeping the triple lock as now
Why is means testing the WFA the work of Satan but means testing the triple lock a brilliant idea?
Easier to scrap the triple lock and link to average earnings.
Problem with means testing is the cost of doing so.
That's one problem, but the bigger one is the effect it has on people's behaviour.
If saving for your retirement just means you are going to get less from the state in decades to come, why bother saving?
(Which was the logic behind gradually making the core state pension drift upwards over a few decades, which the triple lock does in an era of reasonably stable inflation. It doesn't tell us when to step off that escalator, and it doesn't handle spikes like the one we have just had well. But hey ho.)
Surely the logic of saving for your retirement is that the state pension is a bare minimum and you need to save over and above that to have a better standard of living ?
I am not saying you are wrong, I am interested in you going further into the rationale for that view.
problem is if you have pissed all your money up the wall you don't just get the state pension , your bingo card is up and you get all the extra goodies on top.
RefUK came second in a London local by-election yesterday in Hammersmith&Fulham. Their share of the vote wasn't very high but still you wouldn't have expected it in that sort of area.
Albeit only by 0.4% ahead of the Tories and 1.2% ahead of the LDs, the Labour voteshare down 18% though they held it.
In the other by election in Hammersmith and Fulham though Reform were 4th
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
Not fertile labour territory from the looks of it.
Tiptree? Fertile ground for strawberries but not socialism Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal. The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Colchester is the 216th Conservative target seat, on that by election swing Kemi would become PM
And on the swings in the Hammersmith & Fulham or East Ayrshire seats, Kemi would lose seats.
No, on the Hammersmith and Fulham swing she would also gain Chelsea and Fulham and many more seats from Labour even if she also lost a few to Reform and the LDs
There were 2 by-elections in H&F. In one, the Tory vote was up 4.9pp. In the other, it was down 5.5. So, on average, they lost vote share. However, you are right that the vagaries of FPTP mean they could gain net seats on that.
Those elections were in two different Westminster seats - one an ultra marginal lab/con seat, one a safe labour.
Comments
Colchester Tiptree
Con 55.3% (+10.8)
RefUK 28.8% (+10)
Lab 8.5% (-15.6)
Green 4,1% (-2.1)
LD 3.4% (-3)
Labour's week consisted of : -15.6%, -19.3%, -23.1%, -0.1%, -18.28% & -15.6%.
So, I suppose -0.1% and loss of the seat is a good result for Labour in comparison.
I also have that toothless Arsenal not getting past Real Madrid. Not remotely in that tie.
Everton and Notts Forest actually have a better defence than Man City this season. Fact.
So, granddad, grandpa? Difficult decisions. Is smoking a pipe now mandatory? Advice please.
But seriously, congratulations.
I always said 'grandad' for the maternal side and 'grandpa' for the paternal side.
I'd advise against smoking a pipe. You'll be shot by Commissar Miliband's Carbon Stasi before too long.
I kind of like "Pops".
Not that being chameleonic always hurts, but it may have undercut his reform lite credentials he was pushing.
One of my grandfathers was killed in WW2 so I never met him. The other fought in WW1 and was very old when I became aware of him. I don't have much precedent to go on.
What Musk says matters for several reasons:
*) His voice has a massive reach. He has over 200 million followers on Twix alone, and utterly coincidentally his utterances are pressed onto people who are not followers.
*) He is widely admired, mostly by idiots.
*) He has his fingers deep into the American government, and appears to be making them do what he wants.
It'd be similar to the first Viscount Rothermere not only owning newspapers, but being widely admired by a massive number of people, and being an official adviser to the government and running a government quango.
I think history will not view Musk favourably. It doesn't matter what his companies have done in space and EVs; the bad he is doing far outweighs those meagre positives. He'll be seen like a worse Fritz Haber - someone who helped combat starvation by developing a means of manufacturing nitrogen, but who was also known as the father of chemical warfare.
The Kilmarnock seat is a loss for Labour and a gain by the SNP, but that's because you're going from STV for multiple seats to an AV by-election. The SNP topped the poll then and now: had the prior election been for one seat, the SNP would have won. So, in effect, it's really an SNP hold, with a fair swing to Labour.
I am not saying you are wrong, I am interested in you going further into the rationale for that view.
Cool if so.
Indeed when our first grandchild arrived my daughter demanded I stopped smoking which I did [very difficult battle] but now 22 years later it was the best decision for my health ever made
And I am Papa to all my grandchildren
And we knew it before the Paul Daniel’s impersonator even drew it 😖
I've booked train ticket to Manchester for Sunday 9 March. Not looking such a great decision now.
It is grossly unfair, as is the triple lock
You are right to say Zelensky was elected on an "anti-corruption platform". For an equivalent, imagine Paul Eddington running on an "Anti Sir Humphrey" platform for the "Yes, Prime Minister Party".
To add to the comedy, Zelensky was put up by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, who owned the TV act and the campaign. Ukraine is a country like Colombia where every campaign to replace the current administration must always say it's against corruption.
Personally I think
1. The populations in the 6 territories want to be in Russia, the referendums there were not fake, and therefore the territories should be in Russia, and
2. The ~KGB is a formidable organisation, with strong tentacles in France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Britain, etc., etc. (did I mention Oxford, Cambridge, the City, the Temple, and Mayfair?) as well as in the USA (MAGA), and it has long been assisting the far and neo-Nazi right.
3. Zelensky may himself have been a Russian puppet and Kiev's policies from 2014-15 and through 2019 and 2022 may have amounted to a set of provocations teleguided from Moscow.
(It's quite possible 3 is not the case too. But the naive mouthy types who predominate in online discussions have probably not even considered the possibility, and their kneejerk reaction would be to respond with insults and sneers when it's raised.)
As for Tory types, they seem to be going on about "imperialism" a lot. LOL - do they have something against it? They never complain about the brain drain, the Fulbright Program, or foreign military installations on British soil. Where the Russkies are concerned, they seem to forget there's always economics involved in imperialism. Non-British versions aren't reducible to the barbarism of not being born Blightyesque. They are about profits, just as much as the British empire ever was.
The Russian government isn't aiming for Kiev-run Ukraine to be under its economic control. Not out of kindness but because it's out of reach. They're happy to let it be in the EU. They just don't want it to be in NATO.
It's the now breaking up parts of the "ex-west" [1] who are after the minerals in that region and of course they want their military there, just as Russia wants its military on the other side of the line. Seems to me they'll only manage to put a few toes in. They probably know that. But never mind. The war dividend of some grrreat weapons contracts need not require putting lotsa weapons anywhere near Ukraine. Because, Reader, those contracts are all about the money too. Internal dividends in how the home country is run may also be available.
Note
1) The "ex-west" is USA plus western Eurasia, the latter including a nuclear-armed loose-cannon fragment to the NW that was successfully split off from the EU by the ~KGB. Gotta apply Haushofer from a Beijing POV nowadays.
There truly is one born every minute.
"Trump got things done very quickly after his inauguration" (despite most of it being illegal) will be the 2024 "Mussolini made the trains run on time".
(Good morning everyone.)
Barnet, Enfield, Westminster, Croydon, should all be gains, and the Brent North wards will likely swing back heavily, as well.
The calling of an election itself would weaken Z insofar as choices he has made as a war leader would be questioned.
What do you reckon on the idea that Z may himself have been ~KGB and that the Tories don't have a fucking clue where the real ~KGB is concerned?
BREAKING: Trump states Alderaan "should not have started" the war with the Empire.
My children have two granddads, one granny and one grandma - all personal choice of the grandparents in question.
My eldest son has a particularly strong bond with his maternal granddad; there's just a strong innate connection there as they share curiousity about the world, puzzles, logic etc. It's a wonderful thing to see. Grandparenting looks like a fun job
Trump orders famous Resolute Desk removed from the Oval Office for restoration—after Elon Musk’s son wiped his nose on it
According to The New York Post, Trump, known for his extreme germophobia, was reportedly disgusted after witnessing the incident.
The Resolute Desk has been used by many U.S. presidents, including John F. Kennedy. It was originally a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States in 1880 and was placed in the Oval Office in 1961.
“Heil Hitler! I want the world to know that I am a Jew hater!”
Britain confirms AI will not be given access to nukes
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-confirms-ai-will-not-be-given-access-to-nukes/
AI doesn’t think. It predicts.
AI doesn’t understand. It associates.
AI doesn’t create. It remixes.
The real danger isn’t AI becoming human. It’s humans mistaking AI for human.
Conservative hold in council by-election in rural Essex is not a shock swing, likewise Colchester to revert to a Conservative MP at the next GE would also not be shocking, just reversion to normal.
The big change in Colchester is from Lib Dem to Labour over the last 10 years
Charlie Faulkner not so much. Has he resigned yet?
Is that a like record - now 23 ?
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/conservative#google_vignette
The "everyone's a victim" brigade would be up in arms and getting their airing on the 6 o'clock news.
Now there's something to make the mind boggle !!!!
Would it not be more plausible if you fabricated a vote like, say, 68%, a big margin, but within the bounds of possibility?
Expanding a bit, means tests have the effect of being utterly brutal on those just above the magic line. See also the weird consequences of working a bit longer or for a bit more pay than the 16 hours/minimum wave cutoff.
Long story short- as a nation, we're not actually going to leave old people destitute, because we're British not American. And if we're going to have that at the level of pension credit plus the associated goodies, there's probably a better response in the economy to just give that to everyone and get it back from the better off via taxation.
(And I say that as someone who will probably be worse off in that setup.)
Fantastic news David.
So happy for you and your family. Brilliant news.
Lib Dem: 18 years
Conservative: 9 years
Labour: 1 year
So it wouldn't be a 'reversion to normal' at all. It's only had a Conservative MP from 2015 until 2024, when they had a majority/near majority.
Since 1945 it has been won by Labour in .... 2024
It will definitely be far higher than 216th on the Conservative target list at the next GE.
We cannot have a situation where people like me will get a pension in a few years time, on the basis that I have worked all my life and paid for others pensions so it is my turn, which is fair enough but then the next generation have to pay for ours and won;t get one at all.
How can young people support capitalism and a capitalist system if they cannot have a stake in it and it only takes from them.
It needs to be sustainable and it needs to be there for the next generations too.
Very informal would be 할버지.
Formal 할아버님, and 외할아버님.
There's also a separate set of honorific verbs for addressing grandparents...
As a judge, I think David ought to insist on formality.
"How do you feel about becoming a grandad, DavidL?"
"It's not bad. But I am now sleeping with a grandmother"
boom-tish.
The UK's most senior judge being part of the UK cabinet introduces a democratic accountability into the system which has now gone, and contributes to a wide sense that judges can do what they like. Personally I think parliamentary statutes are plenty clear enough, but we previously relied upon a system where judges didn't rip the piss. No judge in the 1990s would have allowed a paedophile to avoid deportation due to the negative impact that it would have on his child for example.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-ukraine-crisis-poll-intl/