Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Such "efficiency savings" won't provide anything like the money needed to make a substantial difference, either in the US or here. The serious money is what is spent by government, not what it spends on admin.
You're more honest when you suggest cutting working age benefits by 20%. Good luck with that as a manifesto commitment.
My own department, DWP, is measured on how long we spend on talking to unemployed people. Which tends to increase headcount. We should be measured on getting people into work, or reducing the benefit bill
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
£20bn a year was the request - Chagos is £x0m a year so not even 1%.
Great British Energy again - a long term figure which when broken down ain't much per year.
So basically your idea is cut working age benefits - hope you have very comprehensive health insurance because a lot of people don't..
And btw £36bn in 2019 is the equivalent to £45bn today - so the increase is really only £3bn over 6 years or 6.5%. Given the impact of Covid on long term health alongside the large increases in house rental prices that really is remarkably small.
Er, no it wasn’t. You asked for a £20bn saving - I gave you far more.
Now that you've decided that you want £20bn a year, the answer would be clearly be different, but still would not require trimming anything except fat (if it can even be called that).
The Chagos Deal has not cost us anything so far but it is set to cost £90mill a year, which is the best part of a billion, so that isn't less than one percent.
Which is (for the time being) an annual cost of double your measly £20bn, just being paid to the Bank so they can make it disappear.
Working age health benefits will come down when the Government stops its disastrous sicknote policy that means millions signed off work - many of whom can't even get an assessment to get them back into work. It is a national scandal and one that I would hope would exercise all parties - working age sick benefit costs rising £11bn in the space of a few years? But evidently you see this as a great way to spend taxpayers' cash. https://www.benefitstrap.com/
I was at a party in Edinburgh last night. There was a fair bit of political talk. One of the people I was speaking to was a former chair of a school trust in London. He spoke very highly of Gove's reforms in education and we lamented the self satisfied smugness of the Scottish system where we have no new ideas, are unwilling to experiment and spend our time on self-congratulation as standards fall ever further.
As against that, I was talking to a friend of mine this morning who works as a teacher in a school that since being force academised five years ago has lost four headteachers, including one last week following the latest OFSTED report - each one being more damning than the last.
I think it's fair to say that however well intentioned Gove's ideas (and a lot of them were very good in theory) they have had significant drawbacks in their implementation...
And now the school has the impossible task of finding yet another head. Granted the trust can parachute some poor sod in for a while but that head is going to be plotting his escape from the trust instantly.
Now there is the edge case where the next head of the trust is doing the troubleshooting but that usually isn't the case
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Amongst all the noise the actual data is horrendous. Last week the Government raised £4,5bn less in taxes than planned. In essence the Government bet it could raise taxes without shrinking the tax base and lost. Note this is before the big hit in April from the Rachel Reeves budget. The only thing she has got right is that the previous Tory Government left a big mess.
The petty tax rises such as the Church VAT wont make a dent in the deficit. The only real option is massive cuts to welfare or watch inflation take off. Whilst Liz Truss budget was a car crash this one is a slow motion train wreck. This budget could do potentially more long term harm before it is reversed.
Sorry, your interpretation is wrong.
Receipts were £4.6 billion less than forecast by the OBR. The reason for this was smaller than expected receipts from self-assessment income tax and capital gains. Self-assessment is not like PAYE* - you fill out an online form after the tax year has ended, detailing your income, expenditure and allowances. You then have until the end of January the following year to pay up.**
So the smaller than expected tax revenues are a result of poor performance in 2023-24. Guess who was in power then? Labour might well make things worse, but it will take time before we get solid evidence for that and even then, isolating the effect will be difficult if Trump goes mad on the tariffs etc etc.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
If Trump gets his big beautiful deal on minerals, Starmer should send experts from Council planning departments to help with the planning paperwork for new mines. He could also send over those guys from Great British Energy to help mining companies achieve Net Zero.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The surface launched version of this has a range of 400km.
The first public sightings of a Republic of China Air Force 🇹🇼 F-CK-1 fighter with two inert air-launched HF-3 supersonic anti-ship missiles, which are usually launched from trucks or ships. https://x.com/TaiwansDefense/status/1893075558482751605
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Fantasy. These are real people in real jobs. You can’t just wish them out of existence and hope nothing falls over, without getting the same results as Musk.
Unions have a serious problem - their organizers are mostly young socialists, but much of the rank and file is openly MAGA. The UAW especially because 1/3 of the United Auto Workers are not auto workers at all, but grad students
My Deliveroo driver (cars are more common at the weekend) has a personalised number plate. I'm not sure what this says about Starmer's Britain, but something.
(Deliveroo tells you the rider's first name, and today it matched his number plate.)
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Fantasy. These are real people in real jobs. You can’t just wish them out of existence and hope nothing falls over, without getting the same results as Musk.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The problem being that workers must produce greater value than the cost of employing them, otherwise it's futile. It's depressing to realise that a substantial chunk of our population will never work again because they'd be a net drain on any organisation that employed them. Negative marginal utility, in other words.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
If Trump gets his big beautiful deal on minerals, Starmer should send experts from Council planning departments to help with the planning paperwork for new mines. He could also send over those guys from Great British Energy to help mining companies achieve Net Zero.
I was at a party in Edinburgh last night. There was a fair bit of political talk. One of the people I was speaking to was a former chair of a school trust in London. He spoke very highly of Gove's reforms in education and we lamented the self satisfied smugness of the Scottish system where we have no new ideas, are unwilling to experiment and spend our time on self-congratulation as standards fall ever further.
As against that, I was talking to a friend of mine this morning who works as a teacher in a school that since being force academised five years ago has lost four headteachers, including one last week following the latest OFSTED report - each one being more damning than the last.
I think it's fair to say that however well intentioned Gove's ideas (and a lot of them were very good in theory) they have had significant drawbacks in their implementation...
And now the school has the impossible task of finding yet another head. Granted the trust can parachute some poor sod in for a while but that head is going to be plotting his escape from the trust instantly.
Now there is the edge case where the next head of the trust is doing the troubleshooting but that usually isn't the case
Taking on the headship of a school judged as failing is more likely to be a career killer than not. As this illustrates.
And any realistic turnaround plan takes a great deal longer than a year to really show results.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Fantasy. These are real people in real jobs. You can’t just wish them out of existence and hope nothing falls over, without getting the same results as Musk.
What results?
Announcing you are sacking people and having to backtrack two days later. As Musk is finding out, and as everyone who has held a senior position in the public or private sector knows, genuine efficiency savings are hard to do in a way that sticks, and take a lot of effort. They also rarely yield much cash.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The problem being that workers must produce greater value than the cost of employing them, otherwise it's futile. It's depressing to realise that a substantial chunk of our population will never work again because they'd be a net drain on any organisation that employed them. Negative marginal utility, in other words.
I haven't a clue what to do about it, either.
They were before; they can be again. Companies need people. British workers have pretty good education, good English skills, and many other positive attributes. We need to get people out of benefits traps.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Fantasy. These are real people in real jobs. You can’t just wish them out of existence and hope nothing falls over, without getting the same results as Musk.
What results?
Announcing you are sacking people and having to backtrack two days later. As Musk is finding out, and as everyone who has held a senior position in the public or private sector knows, genuine efficiency savings are hard to do in a way that sticks, and take a lot of effort. They also rarely yield much cash.
Fire and rehire is very common practise. I don't condone it - it's horrid, but you should really treat breathless ScottP pasted 'gotchas' with a little more circumspection. Did those people refuse to be rehired because they'd already found other work? Was every fired person taken back on? We don't know the facts beyond the original outrage bollocks. People who hate the idea of DOGE think its going horribly. People who like it seem very pleased with it.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
Not militarily no or even culturally for Republicans until Trump has got rid of wokeism from the US, economically still yes, hence Trump's tariffs on Chinese and soon EU imports too
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
By my (very possibly erroneous definition) Biden was senile and Trump is demented.
Senile = brain gone and quiet Demented = brain gone and loud
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
By my (very possibly erroneous definition) Biden was senile and Trump is demented.
Senile = brain gone and quiet Demented = brain gone and loud
When did you first mention the senility of the President on PB?
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
Well, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are arguably going to get them hatred and sneering. But the American's have generally kept the peace and the bad guys in check since WW2. Arguably WW1. And for that they generally deserve praise.
They have also been protecting their markets. So not exactly simple altruism. But generally, money well spent.
After that speech I suspect Starmer would tell SLab to work with the SNP over Reform and the Tories if the SNP and Greens and LDs lack a majority and SLab held the balance of power
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Amongst all the noise the actual data is horrendous. Last week the Government raised £4,5bn less in taxes than planned. In essence the Government bet it could raise taxes without shrinking the tax base and lost. Note this is before the big hit in April from the Rachel Reeves budget. The only thing she has got right is that the previous Tory Government left a big mess.
The petty tax rises such as the Church VAT wont make a dent in the deficit. The only real option is massive cuts to welfare or watch inflation take off. Whilst Liz Truss budget was a car crash this one is a slow motion train wreck. This budget could do potentially more long term harm before it is reversed.
Sorry, your interpretation is wrong.
Receipts were £4.6 billion less than forecast by the OBR. The reason for this was smaller than expected receipts from self-assessment income tax and capital gains. Self-assessment is not like PAYE* - you fill out an online form after the tax year has ended, detailing your income, expenditure and allowances. You then have until the end of January the following year to pay up.**
So the smaller than expected tax revenues are a result of poor performance in 2023-24. Guess who was in power then? Labour might well make things worse, but it will take time before we get solid evidence for that and even then, isolating the effect will be difficult if Trump goes mad on the tariffs etc etc.
As I pay Self Assessment I am aware of the system. Note I said the Government not Rachel Reeves got this wrong. The Tories had been running a highly socialist style Government for a few years. Just been listening to Charlotte Gill on Peter McCormack who were discussing this and why. The Tories had already hit tax maximisation where additional taxes get less and less money as the tax base shrinks which is partly why they were thrown out. Rachel Reeves saw this and just put up taxes even more. There is no doubt that Brexit / Trump are already shrinking the tax base but Labour have done little to help on this either.
Turning the economy around is like getting a tanker to change direction. It seems that Rachel Reeves has started by going the wrong way. So she will now have to reverse that and then start again. This all takes times which I am not sure Labour has. The most serious threat to Labour comes in 2026 with Welsh and Scottish elections and the switch to the right.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
Well, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are arguably going to get them hatred and sneering. But the American's have generally kept the peace and the bad guys in check since WW2. Arguably WW1. And for that they generally deserve praise.
They have also been protecting their markets. So not exactly simple altruism. But generally, money well spent.
Even Iraq removed Saddam and Afghanistan Bin Laden and of course they kept S Korea free from Communism even if not S Vietnam
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
Well, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are arguably going to get them hatred and sneering. But the American's have generally kept the peace and the bad guys in check since WW2. Arguably WW1. And for that they generally deserve praise.
They have also been protecting their markets. So not exactly simple altruism. But generally, money well spent.
China has similarly expanded its markets - at even greater speed - without sacrificing a single soldier on foreign fields
it is now a small coterie of pencil-heads repeating the same tediously hysterical, barely-adolescent nonsense about Trump again and again and again
This place used to be a bastion of balanced, nuanced, often witty insights from all quarters. It is not that any more
Have you been able to reconcile your weakness in not supporting piling up Russian dead with your seeming support for a Trumpian world view of winners/losers ?
it is now a small coterie of pencil-heads repeating the same tediously hysterical, barely-adolescent nonsense about Trump again and again and again
This place used to be a bastion of balanced, nuanced, often witty insights from all quarters. It is not that any more
Have you been able to reconcile your weakness in not supporting piling up Russian dead with your seeming support for a Trumpian world view of winners/losers ?
My Deliveroo driver (cars are more common at the weekend) has a personalised number plate. I'm not sure what this says about Starmer's Britain, but something.
(Deliveroo tells you the rider's first name, and today it matched his number plate.)
Maybe they changed their name by deed poll to match the letters on their number plate?
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
By my (very possibly erroneous definition) Biden was senile and Trump is demented.
Senile = brain gone and quiet Demented = brain gone and loud
When did you first mention the senility of the President on PB?
In Biden's case probably before he became President.
I was at a party in Edinburgh last night. There was a fair bit of political talk. One of the people I was speaking to was a former chair of a school trust in London. He spoke very highly of Gove's reforms in education and we lamented the self satisfied smugness of the Scottish system where we have no new ideas, are unwilling to experiment and spend our time on self-congratulation as standards fall ever further.
As against that, I was talking to a friend of mine this morning who works as a teacher in a school that since being force academised five years ago has lost four headteachers, including one last week following the latest OFSTED report - each one being more damning than the last.
I think it's fair to say that however well intentioned Gove's ideas (and a lot of them were very good in theory) they have had significant drawbacks in their implementation...
And yet England's PISA scores go up. Scotland's.....don't.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Cancelling the VAT rebate for historic churches is disgusting.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The problem being that workers must produce greater value than the cost of employing them, otherwise it's futile. It's depressing to realise that a substantial chunk of our population will never work again because they'd be a net drain on any organisation that employed them. Negative marginal utility, in other words.
I haven't a clue what to do about it, either.
Your first sentence is the thing that Marx found so amazing, and took 150 pages to write about.
it is now a small coterie of pencil-heads repeating the same tediously hysterical, barely-adolescent nonsense about Trump again and again and again
This place used to be a bastion of balanced, nuanced, often witty insights from all quarters. It is not that any more
Have you been able to reconcile your weakness in not supporting piling up Russian dead with your seeming support for a Trumpian world view of winners/losers ?
You’/re one of the most boring people on here
So you haven't.
That suggests you have a substandard IQ alongside weakness.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Thanks for the reply. My thinking on your points:
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence. - this is possible. I'm not quite sure what is the dynamic and how chancellors talk up, or talk down, the economy in a real way.
- Increasing the cost of employment. Factually correct. Reeves did have to raise taxes and chose I think the politically least damaging way to do so, although other routes might have had fewer perverse economic effects.
- undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects. Disagree. The black hole was actually bigger than claimed. And given we're making comparisons between Chancellors that black hole is a big negative against Jeremy Hunt. I don't believe Reeves has particularly thrown money against projects if you take inflation into account and arguably she's not throwing money at projects enough
- Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance. Interesting that this is a political judgment issue rather than a fiscal one. Which is a valid complaint of course. CofE is a political job
The "black hole" is bullshit and just political cover for tax rises they wanted to carry out anyway.
You only support it as you're a pointless left-wing drone.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The problem being that workers must produce greater value than the cost of employing them, otherwise it's futile. It's depressing to realise that a substantial chunk of our population will never work again because they'd be a net drain on any organisation that employed them. Negative marginal utility, in other words.
I haven't a clue what to do about it, either.
Your first sentence is the thing that Marx found so amazing, and took 150 pages to write about.
And it works the other way round as well.
The employer must give the worker something of greater value than the cost to the worker of working.
There's a fair few days when I finish work thinking I've earned £X for doing very little today.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Amongst all the noise the actual data is horrendous. Last week the Government raised £4,5bn less in taxes than planned. In essence the Government bet it could raise taxes without shrinking the tax base and lost. Note this is before the big hit in April from the Rachel Reeves budget. The only thing she has got right is that the previous Tory Government left a big mess.
The petty tax rises such as the Church VAT wont make a dent in the deficit. The only real option is massive cuts to welfare or watch inflation take off. Whilst Liz Truss budget was a car crash this one is a slow motion train wreck. This budget could do potentially more long term harm before it is reversed.
The VAT rebate one feels inept, and may work the other way. TBF there's talk of a replacement scheme, but it's not being done smoothly.
The scheme has been running since 2001, and has covered VAT on getting on for £2bn worth of relevant parts of projects on listed buildings since then at a cost of £350m, with 3 year funding cycles - occasionally needing politicians prodding to keep it rolling and the Treasury warned off (I assume).
Last year the scheme budget was £42m, of which £29m was claimed. The changes are a reduction to £25m this year, and crickets so far about the future, with a cap of £25k per project.
The budget reduction looks defensible, the cap less so. The two problems are 1 - the cap, which means lots of larger projects will have to go back into fundraising to raise an extra 20%, and 2 - the unpredictability. Many of those projects will have taken 3 to 10 years on both design and fundraising.
It's quite possible that all the other lost revenue on 10s or 100s of millions * of work that's being delayed may be more than the saving on the scheme itself. And these major projects normally provide heavily used community facilities, which are important because local authorities across the country are reducing theirs due to lack of money.
Someone has taken their eye off the strategic ball. That's too frequent with this Government.
(For anyone not knowing the numbers - as a ballpark I think the CofE who have something like 35% of England's Grade I listed buildings spend about £100-150m on maintenance and renovation each year, with bigger projects on top. )
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
Could you explain how the Danish or French or whichever policies differ from the UK one?
I was at a party in Edinburgh last night. There was a fair bit of political talk. One of the people I was speaking to was a former chair of a school trust in London. He spoke very highly of Gove's reforms in education and we lamented the self satisfied smugness of the Scottish system where we have no new ideas, are unwilling to experiment and spend our time on self-congratulation as standards fall ever further.
As against that, I was talking to a friend of mine this morning who works as a teacher in a school that since being force academised five years ago has lost four headteachers, including one last week following the latest OFSTED report - each one being more damning than the last.
I think it's fair to say that however well intentioned Gove's ideas (and a lot of them were very good in theory) they have had significant drawbacks in their implementation...
And yet England's PISA scores go up. Scotland's.....don't.
Scotland certainly has a bit to learn in the thumb on the scale area.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
You have a very naive idea of what the Western alliance is and who it serves. Trump is merely refreshingly honest in his America first doctrine.
America has always been refreshingly self-interested. But they have understood that long term self-interest is not necessarily the same as short term self-interest and that relationships of trust have value.
As more my naivety, let’s just say that - with all due respect to your prowess as a keyboard warrior - I have had more involvement in the western alliance than you have.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
This scheme only exists as a sap to ‘the Conservative Party at prayer’ after George Osborne abolished VAT relief on church repairs in his omnishambles budget.
And as has been pointed out on pb, what Reeves' budget shares with Osborne's omnishambles budget is in being a politically naive pick-and-mix from the Treasury's wishlist.
As always it’s mid year changes that create problems.
People plan on good faith based on current policy. To have a cap suddenly imposed makes it impossible for those who are already committed to expense
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Department does X. Quango does Y. Move Quango into the Department and the Department has to do X and Y. The workload and therefore the number of people hasn't dropped. If you aren't increasing the Department head count, who is doing job Y?
Now you might get efficiencies in putting them together and I am sure there are huge efficiencies to be had in Govt, but Govts of all shades have promised these umpteen times and failed.
You aren't creating any massive costs cuts here by actually removing any tasks from Govt entirely, unless you are saying the Quango does nothing useful. And you didn't as you suggested its role gets moved into the Department. You are just asking Departments to do both roles with the same staff and be more efficient which has been asked of them umpteen times before.
At a minimum, Managment, finance, HR, procurement and other back office savings
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Thanks for the reply. My thinking on your points:
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence. - this is possible. I'm not quite sure what is the dynamic and how chancellors talk up, or talk down, the economy in a real way.
- Increasing the cost of employment. Factually correct. Reeves did have to raise taxes and chose I think the politically least damaging way to do so, although other routes might have had fewer perverse economic effects.
- undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects. Disagree. The black hole was actually bigger than claimed. And given we're making comparisons between Chancellors that black hole is a big negative against Jeremy Hunt. I don't believe Reeves has particularly thrown money against projects if you take inflation into account and arguably she's not throwing money at projects enough
- Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance. Interesting that this is a political judgment issue rather than a fiscal one. Which is a valid complaint of course. CofE is a political job
The "black hole" is bullshit and just political cover for tax rises they wanted to carry out anyway.
You only support it as you're a pointless left-wing drone.
I suppose the Institute of Fiscal Studies must also be a "pointless left-wing drone" on your fatuous reckoning.
His complaint however being that given the black hole was visible from space (to mix a metaphor) Reeves shouldn't claim it as a sudden discovery.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
As I see it, the USA is moving out of the category of advanced democracies into something more akin to current Turkey or India.
I'd argue that there are features of their society that have always been like that - for example hostility to international law and an inground belief that foreigners are worth less than "US Citizens", which we saw in the struggle to keep those people who were arrested at random and shipped Guantanamo in the war on terror away from the protections afforded by US law.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
£20bn a year was the request - Chagos is £x0m a year so not even 1%.
Great British Energy again - a long term figure which when broken down ain't much per year.
So basically your idea is cut working age benefits - hope you have very comprehensive health insurance because a lot of people don't..
And btw £36bn in 2019 is the equivalent to £45bn today - so the increase is really only £3bn over 6 years or 6.5%. Given the impact of Covid on long term health alongside the large increases in house rental prices that really is remarkably small.
Er, no it wasn’t. You asked for a £20bn saving - I gave you far more.
Now that you've decided that you want £20bn a year, the answer would be clearly be different, but still would not require trimming anything except fat (if it can even be called that).
The Chagos Deal has not cost us anything so far but it is set to cost £90mill a year, which is the best part of a billion, so that isn't less than one percent.
Which is (for the time being) an annual cost of double your measly £20bn, just being paid to the Bank so they can make it disappear.
Working age health benefits will come down when the Government stops its disastrous sicknote policy that means millions signed off work - many of whom can't even get an assessment to get them back into work. It is a national scandal and one that I would hope would exercise all parties - working age sick benefit costs rising £11bn in the space of a few years? But evidently you see this as a great way to spend taxpayers' cash. https://www.benefitstrap.com/
As explained on multiple occasions the “losses” the Bank of England suffers are just an accounting entry. They are not an investment firm.
Effectively what is happening is that they are choosing to sell gilts they own into the market for less that the value on their books. This creates a “loss” but results in a net cash increase for the Bank.
The Bank then retires that cash, resulting in a reduction in the broad money supply.
So you have a choice: (a) do this and book an accounting loss; or (b) don’t do this and stoke asset price inflation as a result of excess money supply.
Given that excessively high house prices are one of the major issues the country faces, I’m glad that the bank is taking action to mitigate further upwards pressure
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
As I see it, the USA is moving out of the category of advanced democracies into something more akin to current Turkey or India.
I'd argue that there are features of their society that have always been like that - for example hostility to international law and an inground belief that foreigners are worth less than "US Citizens", which we saw in the struggle to keep those people who were arrested at random and shipped Guantanamo in the war on terror away from the protections afforded by US law.
A state not prioritising the welfare of its own citizens above others is anti-democratic almost by definition.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Thanks for the reply. My thinking on your points:
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence. - this is possible. I'm not quite sure what is the dynamic and how chancellors talk up, or talk down, the economy in a real way.
- Increasing the cost of employment. Factually correct. Reeves did have to raise taxes and chose I think the politically least damaging way to do so, although other routes might have had fewer perverse economic effects.
- undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects. Disagree. The black hole was actually bigger than claimed. And given we're making comparisons between Chancellors that black hole is a big negative against Jeremy Hunt. I don't believe Reeves has particularly thrown money against projects if you take inflation into account and arguably she's not throwing money at projects enough
- Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance. Interesting that this is a political judgment issue rather than a fiscal one. Which is a valid complaint of course. CofE is a political job
The "black hole" is bullshit and just political cover for tax rises they wanted to carry out anyway.
You only support it as you're a pointless left-wing drone.
I suppose the Institute of Fiscal Studies must also be a "pointless left-wing drone" on your fatuous reckoning.
His complaint however being that given the black hole was visible from space (to mix a metaphor) Reeves shouldn't claim it as a sudden discovery.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
Individuals - including me - don’t matter.
Countries do. The next time America wants help with something will other countries be more or less willing to come to their aid do you think?
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Department does X. Quango does Y. Move Quango into the Department and the Department has to do X and Y. The workload and therefore the number of people hasn't dropped. If you aren't increasing the Department head count, who is doing job Y?
Now you might get efficiencies in putting them together and I am sure there are huge efficiencies to be had in Govt, but Govts of all shades have promised these umpteen times and failed.
You aren't creating any massive costs cuts here by actually removing any tasks from Govt entirely, unless you are saying the Quango does nothing useful. And you didn't as you suggested its role gets moved into the Department. You are just asking Departments to do both roles with the same staff and be more efficient which has been asked of them umpteen times before.
At a minimum, Managment, finance, HR, procurement and other back office savings
Well I agreed that didn't I. I specifically said so, although a lot of these would be central functions already. Not the point being made. Y still has to be done. According to @Luckyguy1983 the people doing X full time will also be able to do Y as well. Unless they are twiddling their fingers all day they can't.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The problem being that workers must produce greater value than the cost of employing them, otherwise it's futile. It's depressing to realise that a substantial chunk of our population will never work again because they'd be a net drain on any organisation that employed them. Negative marginal utility, in other words.
I haven't a clue what to do about it, either.
Your first sentence is the thing that Marx found so amazing, and took 150 pages to write about.
And it works the other way round as well.
The employer must give the worker something of greater value than the cost to the worker of working.
There's a fair few days when I finish work thinking I've earned £X for doing very little today.
I am quite experienced at what I do, which means I have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. I think that's my real value to my employer. I would struggle to come up with five achievements in a week that justify my employment.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
Individuals - including me - don’t matter.
Countries do. The next time America wants help with something will other countries be more or less willing to come to their aid do you think?
Depends on the relative economic might of America, and the threat from America's rivals. This is - basically - same as it ever was
Trump has simply made it obvious, like a guy who pays most for lunch but dissects the bill in front of you, instead of discreetly slipping in his platinum card and contunuing the convo
There was little to guide the voters; it was a new non-partisan position, and advertising would have given them little guidance. But there was this: Candidates could list their profession or currect jobs on the ballot, so voters could see very brief CVs.
Candidates who did not mention their current jobs or a profession did worse than average -- and so did lawyers.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Cancelling the VAT rebate for historic churches is disgusting.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Nasty government.
Indeed, historic churches, farmers, small business owners, private school parents, pensioners all being hit by this dreadful government.
Though at least the C of E Synod last week voted for commissioners to give more of their funds for Parishes in poorer areas which should help Parishes in less wealthy areas with historic churches maintain them despite the VAT cap of £25k for church relief
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
There’s truth in that, but it is also true that an America which acts like this will cease to be the leader of the free world. And soon it will notice that if it really wants to counter China, it needs its culturally similar western allies.
America, AFAICS, ho longer wants to be “leader of the Free World” - certainly not if it costs Americans money
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
As I see it, the USA is moving out of the category of advanced democracies into something more akin to current Turkey or India.
I'd argue that there are features of their society that have always been like that - for example hostility to international law and an inground belief that foreigners are worth less than "US Citizens", which we saw in the struggle to keep those people who were arrested at random and shipped Guantanamo in the war on terror away from the protections afforded by US law.
The USA is behaving as though it doesn't need allies - which might actually have been a plausible outlook c.1946, when the USA produced nearly 50% of world GDP, but is not sustainable today.
Take the Iraq and Afghan wars. The UK suffered 3,500 casualties, in the former, and 1,800 in the latter. Canada suffered 800 casualties in the latter. Other US allies, likewise, took casualties, in wars led by the US.
The Trump/Vance/Hegseth outlook is that those soldiers were all "suckers and losers", and that foreign countries who assist the US are likewise "suckers and losers."
Or, anyone who sells goods and services to US businesses and consumers is "stealing" from the United States.
Why the hell would any nation view the US with anything other than contempt and hostility, when that is how the government of the US clearly views them?
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
Individuals - including me - don’t matter.
Countries do. The next time America wants help with something will other countries be more or less willing to come to their aid do you think?
When those in power start to think individuals don't matter it is time to be bringing out the pitchforks.
Individualism is what really made England, Britain the American colonies and the British Empire greater than the alternatives. It is the only philosophy which is worth dying for.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The problem being that workers must produce greater value than the cost of employing them, otherwise it's futile. It's depressing to realise that a substantial chunk of our population will never work again because they'd be a net drain on any organisation that employed them. Negative marginal utility, in other words.
I haven't a clue what to do about it, either.
Your first sentence is the thing that Marx found so amazing, and took 150 pages to write about.
And it works the other way round as well.
The employer must give the worker something of greater value than the cost to the worker of working.
There's a fair few days when I finish work thinking I've earned £X for doing very little today.
I am quite experienced at what I do, which means I have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. I think that's my real value to my employer. I would struggle to come up with five achievements in a week that justify my employment.
Musk has gone a bit David Brent with this.
"I'm a tech bro first, a neo nazi second, and third probably a chilled out HR professional"
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
I think it was Harry Flashman who suggested he would make a good general as he was a clever coward.
Whereas Lord Raglan was the sort of general who got people killed by being determined to do his duty but incompetent.
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
SpaceX is most definitely the greatest achievement that Musk has been involved in. It's revolutionised space travel.
Tesla has successfully jump started the electric car industry, but will ultimately end up being just-another-car-company. Musk will cash out for the most part while the hype is still believed, so all fine for him.
His role in government I think will end up being Truss-ian in how fondly its looked back on by historians. I think he should have stuck to engineering.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
No agreement on Chagos has been reached, so we’ve not spent any money on it.
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
By getting people back into work. Which will also be a great uplift to economic growth, as well as enhancing the lives and life chances of millions.
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
The problem being that workers must produce greater value than the cost of employing them, otherwise it's futile. It's depressing to realise that a substantial chunk of our population will never work again because they'd be a net drain on any organisation that employed them. Negative marginal utility, in other words.
I haven't a clue what to do about it, either.
Your first sentence is the thing that Marx found so amazing, and took 150 pages to write about.
And it works the other way round as well.
The employer must give the worker something of greater value than the cost to the worker of working.
There's a fair few days when I finish work thinking I've earned £X for doing very little today.
I am quite experienced at what I do, which means I have a good idea of what works and what doesn't. I think that's my real value to my employer. I would struggle to come up with five achievements in a week that justify my employment.
Indeed.
Some workers add small amounts of value steadily and some add large amounts of value but only occasionally.
Depending on the organisation it will need varying amounts of each type.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Cancelling the VAT rebate for historic churches is disgusting.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Nasty government.
That’s just the point. It won’t. They are *listed* places of worship. The church has an obligation to maintain them.
The money will come from central funds (it won’t but it should) or from the congregation.
It’s effectively a hidden tax raid on middle class Christians (mainly Anglicans given listed status).
Note the 30 mile jump cut towards the end of the film.
Having denounced PB as irredeemably boring, that is actually rather interesting
Thankyou
I had no idea about that whole seacoal into the sea thingy (I’ve never watched Get Carter, I know, I know)
There’s a wonderful exhibition on in London at the moment called Lives Less Ordinary - about all of those working class jobs that used to exist.
There used to be people who made a living, for example, scavenging coal that fell out of barges into the shallow water in the NE. Some wonderful photographs of their lives.
If the US thinks it can charge Ukraine $500 billion for some unspecified future support in their war, how much should we retrospectively charge the Yanks for our support for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
You have a very naive idea of what the Western alliance is and who it serves. Trump is merely refreshingly honest in his America first doctrine.
America has always been refreshingly self-interested. But they have understood that long term self-interest is not necessarily the same as short term self-interest and that relationships of trust have value.
As more my naivety, let’s just say that - with all due respect to your prowess as a keyboard warrior - I have had more involvement in the western alliance than you have.
I would have to be pretty dense not to realise that - your frequent allusions to it are not exactly subtle. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean you're not naive.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Department does X. Quango does Y. Move Quango into the Department and the Department has to do X and Y. The workload and therefore the number of people hasn't dropped. If you aren't increasing the Department head count, who is doing job Y?
Now you might get efficiencies in putting them together and I am sure there are huge efficiencies to be had in Govt, but Govts of all shades have promised these umpteen times and failed.
You aren't creating any massive costs cuts here by actually removing any tasks from Govt entirely, unless you are saying the Quango does nothing useful. And you didn't as you suggested its role gets moved into the Department. You are just asking Departments to do both roles with the same staff and be more efficient which has been asked of them umpteen times before.
At a minimum, Managment, finance, HR, procurement and other back office savings
Well I agreed that didn't I. I specifically said so, although a lot of these would be central functions already. Not the point being made. Y still has to be done. According to @Luckyguy1983 the people doing X full time will also be able to do Y as well. Unless they are twiddling their fingers all day they can't.
In reality most office based professionals can take on additional work. Front line staff less obviously
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Cancelling the VAT rebate for historic churches is disgusting.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Nasty government.
Indeed, historic churches, farmers, small business owners, private school parents, pensioners all being hit by this dreadful government.
Though at least the C of E Synod last week voted for commissioners to give more of their funds for Parishes in poorer areas which should help Parishes in less wealthy areas with historic churches maintain them despite the VAT cap of £25k for church relief
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
Yes. Tax rises. For the most part, at least on an intellectual level, I support taxing capital gains at the same level as income. That includes taxing real estate ownership properly. I would prefer income taxes to come down so that more people can accumulate capital and invest, if they so wish. That is the way capitalism is supposed to work after all.
I agree on some of your principles, but you've so far left Government funding broadly the same. We cannot pay for the vast metastasing state and the services and infrastructure needed for massive level of low income immigration with that.
Once again - you want to cut public sector - show me, I don't know, say £20bn of savings?
Are you serious? £20bn can be reached without even noticing. Chagos? Great British Energy? End either the Treasury's agreement to indemnify the Bank of England for losses on its QT programme, or the QT programme itself - Bank's choice.
Working age health related benefits, currently £48bn (up from £36bn in 2019-20 ai says), that can (and must) come down by £10bn for starters.
That's without touching any departmental budgets, which must also come down massively, as well as (or perhaps instead of) winding up QUANGOs and bringing their responsibilities back into the departments.
How does moving non-departmental public bodies around necessarily save cash? If a task needs doing, then we need to employ someone to do it. Maybe some savings in centralising HR etc. but most of them use central services anyway.
Taking work out of government requires the much harder process of getting rid of the worst performers, and using fewer, better, staff to do more; as well as deciding to stop doing some things at all.
Because you wouldn't increase departmental headcount.
Fantasy. These are real people in real jobs. You can’t just wish them out of existence and hope nothing falls over, without getting the same results as Musk.
What results?
Announcing you are sacking people and having to backtrack two days later. As Musk is finding out, and as everyone who has held a senior position in the public or private sector knows, genuine efficiency savings are hard to do in a way that sticks, and take a lot of effort. They also rarely yield much cash.
Fire and rehire is very common practise. I don't condone it - it's horrid, but you should really treat breathless ScottP pasted 'gotchas' with a little more circumspection. Did those people refuse to be rehired because they'd already found other work? Was every fired person taken back on? We don't know the facts beyond the original outrage bollocks. People who hate the idea of DOGE think its going horribly. People who like it seem very pleased with it.
It fits very much with Musk practice, as does the mass email (though the details differ a little, the approach is the same).
The points here, though, are twofold. First, Musk doesn't understand the Federal government, or its various purposes, anywhere near as well as he does his own companies. Second, not every mistake is going to be as immediately apparent, or as rectifiable, as Scott's examples.
Mix in the fact that he has no direct mandate, and questionable legal authority for any of this, bigger and less fixable fuckups will have larger consequences.
We will see whether all this works out, or not, well before the midterms.
1. Reeves is quite politically stupid 2. The Treasury is full of horrible little gradgrinds 3. Labour just don’t have the impulse to give a shit about British culture and heritage.
The next election will be Labour vs Reform. And Labour will win that choice IMHO.
I’ve been saying that for a while. And any contest between Labour and Reform will be won by Labour.
Having said that, current events could simply cripple Reform and enable a Tory recovery, although they would need to dump Badenoch, who is a joke - worse than IDS.
Reform want to copy Musk's gutting of the state here in the UK... I think this interview will come back and haunt Reform badly. There is no appetite for this in the broad electorate...
Depends on whether you think partisan opinion is malleable.
Musk and others have shaped opinion in the US because MAGA supporters follow deductive reasoning: that Trump and his cabal are right, so if they decide it’s right to gut the government or switch sides and ally with Russia then that must be the correct position. Not a new phenomenon - something religions and political movements have exploited since Moses came down from Mt Sinai.
There is little choice but to reform and vastly shrink the size of the state. Do those who oppose it instead favour big tax rises? On who? On what? Labour will have already (haphazardly and inefficiently) started the process by the time the election comes round, so there won't exaclty be a debate around the matter.
The biggest problem with the moronic and hamfisted DOGE disaster is that it will kill attempts at real regulatory and governmental reform for a generation.
We are already hearing measured regulatory reform by the current U.K. government being called Trumpian, by its opponents.
I don't agree. Critique of the daily DOGE pratfalls (and of the Trump programme in general) has a limited shelf life because eventually, albeit with hiccoughs and false starts, they seem to work. Take Ukraine - we are utterly outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy currently. But what if he brings peace in Ukraine, energy prices fall, the US enjoys a fat return off Ukraine's minerals... Who looks stupid then?
That Trumpian cricitism is all these people have. They should welcome reform by the current Government - it's not going to be so pleasant from the next one.
Geopolitics doesn’t work like that
He might have made transactionally a good deal, but he would have undermined Europe’s security, rewarded an invasion of a peaceful neighbouring state and trashed America’s reputation while fatally undermining the Western Alliance.
The costs may not be immediately obvious to you but the damage is immense
But this is liberal Eurocentric bullshit
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
Individuals - including me - don’t matter.
Countries do. The next time America wants help with something will other countries be more or less willing to come to their aid do you think?
When those in power start to think individuals don't matter it is time to be bringing out the pitchforks.
Individualism is what really made England, Britain the American colonies and the British Empire greater than the alternatives. It is the only philosophy which is worth dying for.
May be I wasn’t clear in my intent.
Of course individuals matter.
However, what I think of the US’s geopolitical strategy is (relatively) unimportant.
Comments
https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/uk-politics/keir-starmer-condemns-reform-uks-dangerous-right-wing-politics/
Now that you've decided that you want £20bn a year, the answer would be clearly be different, but still would not require trimming anything except fat (if it can even be called that).
The Chagos Deal has not cost us anything so far but it is set to cost £90mill a year, which is the best part of a billion, so that isn't less than one percent.
As for the losses from indemnifying the Bank of England against its QT losses, which I notice you don't address, they were as follows in 2023-24:
Annual losses in each of 2023 and 2024 will amount to £40 billion
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmselect/cmtreasy/219/report.html
Which is (for the time being) an annual cost of double your measly £20bn, just being paid to the Bank so they can make it disappear.
Working age health benefits will come down when the Government stops its disastrous sicknote policy that means millions signed off work - many of whom can't even get an assessment to get them back into work. It is a national scandal and one that I would hope would exercise all parties - working age sick benefit costs rising £11bn in the space of a few years? But evidently you see this as a great way to spend taxpayers' cash.
https://www.benefitstrap.com/
Now there is the edge case where the next head of the trust is doing the troubleshooting but that usually isn't the case
How do you reduce working age health related benefits by over 20%? Do you give everyone less money or stop payments to 20% of people?
How does bringing quangos’ responsibilities back into departments save money? The work still has to be done by someone.
Receipts were £4.6 billion less than forecast by the OBR. The reason for this was smaller than expected receipts from self-assessment income tax and capital gains. Self-assessment is not like PAYE* - you fill out an online form after the tax year has ended, detailing your income, expenditure and allowances. You then have until the end of January the following year to pay up.**
So the smaller than expected tax revenues are a result of poor performance in 2023-24. Guess who was in power then? Labour might well make things worse, but it will take time before we get solid evidence for that and even then, isolating the effect will be difficult if Trump goes mad on the tariffs etc etc.
*This is of course a gross simplification.
** You can monitor real-time PAYE here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/datasets/realtimeinformationstatisticsreferencetableseasonallyadjusted
No other country has the disastrously wasteful policy on sickness benefits that we do, and they all went through Covid. So take your pick. Adopt the Danish policy. Adopt the French policy. Go for whatever country reflects your world view, it really doesn't matter.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/02/04/labour-work-with-reform-to-oust-snp/
The first public sightings of a Republic of China Air Force 🇹🇼 F-CK-1 fighter with two inert air-launched HF-3 supersonic anti-ship missiles, which are usually launched from trucks or ships.
https://x.com/TaiwansDefense/status/1893075558482751605
Trump/Musk have trashed America’s reputation with a subset of liberal euro-Americans, that’s it. People like you, in other words. People like PBers, in the main
The average person on the Mumbai Omnibus or the Nairobi tram or the Shanghai metro - which is, let us remember, 90% of people in the world - doesn’t give a fuck and to the extent they do give a fuck they probably see a more determined and ruthless president in the White House, compared to the clearly demented Biden
https://x.com/bigseb31213/status/1893401115393180058
Unions have a serious problem - their organizers are mostly young socialists, but much of the rank and file is openly MAGA. The UAW especially because 1/3 of the United Auto Workers are not auto workers at all, but grad students
this is not a sustainable coalition
(Deliveroo tells you the rider's first name, and today it matched his number plate.)
I haven't a clue what to do about it, either.
And any realistic turnaround plan takes a great deal longer than a year to really show results.
And who can blame them? All they get is hatred and sneering, most of it from their supposed “allies”
https://www.wahl-o-mat.de/bundestagswahl2025/app/main_app.html
Where you agree or disagree with a bunch of policies and see which party fits best.
I got Volt, who I did vote for in the last euros.
it is now a small coterie of pencil-heads repeating the same tediously hysterical, barely-adolescent nonsense about Trump again and again and again
This place used to be a bastion of balanced, nuanced, often witty insights from all quarters. It is not that any more
Senile = brain gone and quiet
Demented = brain gone and loud
They have also been protecting their markets. So not exactly simple altruism. But generally, money well spent.
As I pay Self Assessment I am aware of the system. Note I said the Government not Rachel Reeves got this wrong. The Tories had been running a highly socialist style Government for a few years. Just been listening to Charlotte Gill on Peter McCormack who were discussing this and why. The Tories had already hit tax maximisation where additional taxes get less and less money as the tax base shrinks which is partly why they were thrown out. Rachel Reeves saw this and just put up taxes even more. There is no doubt that Brexit / Trump are already shrinking the tax base but Labour have done little to help on this either.
Turning the economy around is like getting a tanker to change direction. It seems that Rachel Reeves has started by going the wrong way. So she will now have to reverse that and then start again. This all takes times which I am not sure Labour has. The most serious threat to Labour comes in 2026 with Welsh and Scottish elections and the switch to the right.
Who gave this mantle to the US President and it’s laughable now given Trumps actions.
I think Americans have noticed
That's what my mate Fxr did.
I wasn't alone.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Nasty government.
That suggests you have a substandard IQ alongside weakness.
Prime characteristics of a cult follower.
You only support it as you're a pointless left-wing drone.
Thankyou
I had no idea about that whole seacoal into the sea thingy (I’ve never watched Get Carter, I know, I know)
The employer must give the worker something of greater value than the cost to the worker of working.
There's a fair few days when I finish work thinking I've earned £X for doing very little today.
The scheme has been running since 2001, and has covered VAT on getting on for £2bn worth of relevant parts of projects on listed buildings since then at a cost of £350m, with 3 year funding cycles - occasionally needing politicians prodding to keep it rolling and the Treasury warned off (I assume).
Last year the scheme budget was £42m, of which £29m was claimed. The changes are a reduction to £25m this year, and crickets so far about the future, with a cap of £25k per project.
The budget reduction looks defensible, the cap less so. The two problems are 1 - the cap, which means lots of larger projects will have to go back into fundraising to raise an extra 20%, and 2 - the unpredictability. Many of those projects will have taken 3 to 10 years on both design and fundraising.
It's quite possible that all the other lost revenue on 10s or 100s of millions * of work that's being delayed may be more than the saving on the scheme itself. And these major projects normally provide heavily used community facilities, which are important because local authorities across the country are reducing theirs due to lack of money.
Someone has taken their eye off the strategic ball. That's too frequent with this Government.
(For anyone not knowing the numbers - as a ballpark I think the CofE who have something like 35% of England's Grade I listed buildings spend about £100-150m on maintenance and renovation each year, with bigger projects on top. )
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/pisa-2022-rise-in-maths-but-warning-over-inflated-results/#:~:text=But the country's performance is,caution on interpreting the findings.
As more my naivety, let’s just say that - with all due respect to your prowess as a keyboard warrior - I have had more involvement in the western alliance than you have.
People plan on good faith based on current policy. To have a cap suddenly imposed makes it impossible for those who are already committed to expense
At just one old mine it involved 400k tonnes of spoil being removed, 200k tonnes ** topsoil being laid and 150k trees being planted.
And this has been done every few miles in much of Yorkshire and the midlands.
** it may have been the other way round.
His complaint however being that given the black hole was visible from space (to mix a metaphor) Reeves shouldn't claim it as a sudden discovery.
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/ps22bn-black-hole-was-obvious-anyone-who-dared-look
I'd argue that there are features of their society that have always been like that - for example hostility to international law and an inground belief that foreigners are worth less than "US Citizens", which we saw in the struggle to keep those people who were arrested at random and shipped Guantanamo in the war on terror away from the protections afforded by US law.
Effectively what is happening is that they are choosing to sell gilts they own into the market for less that the value on their books. This creates a “loss” but results in a net cash increase for the Bank.
The Bank then retires that cash, resulting in a reduction in the broad money supply.
So you have a choice: (a) do this and book an accounting loss; or (b) don’t do this and stoke asset price inflation as a result of excess money supply.
Given that excessively high house prices are one of the major issues the country faces, I’m glad that the bank is taking action to mitigate further upwards pressure
https://x.com/essenviews/status/1893505458855354583?s=46&t=fJymV-V84rexmlQMLXHHJQ
Countries do. The next time America wants help with something will other countries be more or less willing to come to their aid do you think?
Trump has simply made it obvious, like a guy who pays most for lunch but dissects the bill in front of you, instead of discreetly slipping in his platinum card and contunuing the convo
Vulgar, but salutary
There was an election years ago in Southern California in which voters had to choose among 133 candidates: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2747969
There was little to guide the voters; it was a new non-partisan position, and advertising would have given them little guidance. But there was this: Candidates could list their profession or currect jobs on the ballot, so voters could see very brief CVs.
Candidates who did not mention their current jobs or a profession did worse than average -- and so did lawyers.
Though at least the C of E Synod last week voted for commissioners to give more of their funds for Parishes in poorer areas which should help Parishes in less wealthy areas with historic churches maintain them despite the VAT cap of £25k for church relief
https://savetheparish.blogspot.com/2025/02/a-victory-in-synod.html
https://x.com/vonderleyen/status/1893652551947403424
Had good exchanges on the phone this weekend with @EmmanuelMacron and @Keir_Starmer.
We discussed our unflinching support to Ukraine, financially and militarily.
We shared updates on our contacts with US partners and discussed plans for the defence & security of our continent.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
Take the Iraq and Afghan wars. The UK suffered 3,500 casualties, in the former, and 1,800 in the latter. Canada suffered 800 casualties in the latter. Other US allies, likewise, took casualties, in wars led by the US.
The Trump/Vance/Hegseth outlook is that those soldiers were all "suckers and losers", and that foreign countries who assist the US are likewise "suckers and losers."
Or, anyone who sells goods and services to US businesses and consumers is "stealing" from the United States.
Why the hell would any nation view the US with anything other than contempt and hostility, when that is how the government of the US clearly views them?
Individualism is what really made England, Britain the American colonies and the British Empire greater than the alternatives. It is the only philosophy which is worth dying for.
"I'm a tech bro first, a neo nazi second, and third probably a chilled out HR professional"
Whereas Lord Raglan was the sort of general who got people killed by being determined to do his duty but incompetent.
Tesla has successfully jump started the electric car industry, but will ultimately end up being just-another-car-company. Musk will cash out for the most part while the hype is still believed, so all fine for him.
His role in government I think will end up being Truss-ian in how fondly its looked back on by historians. I think he should have stuck to engineering.
Some workers add small amounts of value steadily and some add large amounts of value but only occasionally.
Depending on the organisation it will need varying amounts of each type.
The next election will be Labour vs Reform. And Labour will win that choice IMHO.
The money will come from central funds (it won’t but it should) or from the congregation.
It’s effectively a hidden tax raid on middle class Christians (mainly Anglicans given listed status).
There used to be people who made a living, for example, scavenging coal that fell out of barges into the shallow water in the NE. Some wonderful photographs of their lives.
Farmers - Tories
Small business owners - Tories
Private school parents - Tories
Wealthy pensioners - Tories
I have no idea why a Labour government should be hitting these groups in the pocket.
The points here, though, are twofold.
First, Musk doesn't understand the Federal government, or its various purposes, anywhere near as well as he does his own companies.
Second, not every mistake is going to be as immediately apparent, or as rectifiable, as Scott's examples.
Mix in the fact that he has no direct mandate, and questionable legal authority for any of this, bigger and less fixable fuckups will have larger consequences.
We will see whether all this works out, or not, well before the midterms.
1. Reeves is quite politically stupid
2. The Treasury is full of horrible little gradgrinds
3. Labour just don’t have the impulse to give a shit about British culture and heritage.
I assume though, born in 1983? In which case, an expert on Thatcher obvs.
And any contest between Labour and Reform will be won by Labour.
Having said that, current events could simply cripple Reform and enable a Tory recovery, although they would need to dump Badenoch, who is a joke - worse than IDS.
Of course individuals matter.
However, what I think of the US’s geopolitical strategy is (relatively) unimportant.
What the UK or France thinks matters.
I think only 2.5 hours until polls close.