Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beachy Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I'm not a partisan Tory - I often vote Lib Dem in local elections - but I think my view is that the Tories have (deservedly) received a general election kicking that will - and should - keep them out of power for more than one election. So I am not sure it matters where the votes go. I despise the Fukkers but they are about to expose themselves as idiots by trying to run local councils. And in any case, the government is behaving more like a conservative government than the last one did, which pissed public money up against the wall with gay abandoned while simultaneously managing to hollow out public services.
Depending on Reform being unable to run local councils sounds very like the thinking about the National Ramblers in France. “They will collapse under their own contradictions.”
It's not necessarily a dependency on that, it's just the political cycle. The Tories get a shellacking, they are back in 2 or 3 elections time
The Liberals were probably saying a version of that in the 1920s.
Labour need to go a lot further on planning reform but they've made a good start. The Tories and Reform as best I can tell love NIMBYism or at least will do nothing to challenge it.
I am also confident they will go for zonal pricing which will make an impact on energy bills in some of the country where frankly it's ridiculous their bills aren't basically zero (i.e. Scotland).
The LDs are more Nimby than the Tories, as yes are Reform too
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
Now sit down, think very very hard and read @TimS post again. Now concentrate and see if you can see what is wrong with what you said. High IQ my arse.
Wealthy people may be leaving, but that stat doesn't tell you that because those receipts are for CGT prior to even a Labour Govt. You twit.
Again you’re such a fuckwit you don’t understand that people move BEFORE tax rises, if they think those are coming down the line. That’s how really rich people stay rich
From the Telegraph:
“One of the consequences of tax revenue becoming more reliant on a smaller number of people is that it does make the public finances more vulnerable to the behaviour of that small number of people,” says Stuart Adam of the IFS
“If you did see a large exodus, that would have an outside impact on the public finances. That is a reason to worry,” he adds…..
“Once you have changes to the non-dom regime, inheritance tax, CAPITAL GAINS TAX and VAT on private schools ... lots of these things affect overlapping groups of people.”
We had a pretty good cocktail in the UK, attractive enough to entice the mobile wealthy. One by one we have removed all the nice ingredients - and now we are left with a big city with high taxes and bad weather where you can’t wear a flashy watch because someone will attack you with a machete
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
Some sensible points but some nations like the US, Canada, Italy and Poland only pay unemployment benefits if you have contributed enough in social insurance when in work.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
Dire service from the DVLA / passport office?
only from the bits that haven’t been automated - because even complex things like emergency replacement passports are now simple if your details are in the system - eek twin a got an emergency travel document in 2 days and the delay was delivery time to our embassy in Basil
Equally DVLA has made the standard tasks simple, it’s when human beings and decisions are needed where things fall apart
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
Now sit down, think very very hard and read @TimS post again. Now concentrate and see if you can see what is wrong with what you said. High IQ my arse.
Wealthy people may be leaving, but that stat doesn't tell you that because those receipts are for CGT prior to even a Labour Govt. You twit.
Again you’re such a fuckwit you don’t understand that people move BEFORE tax rises, if they think those are coming down the line. That’s how really rich people stay rich
From the Telegraph:
“One of the consequences of tax revenue becoming more reliant on a smaller number of people is that it does make the public finances more vulnerable to the behaviour of that small number of people,” says Stuart Adam of the IFS
“If you did see a large exodus, that would have an outside impact on the public finances. That is a reason to worry,” he adds…..
“Once you have changes to the non-dom regime, inheritance tax, CAPITAL GAINS TAX and VAT on private schools ... lots of these things affect overlapping groups of people.”
We had a pretty good cocktail in the UK, attractive enough to entice the mobile wealthy. One by one we have removed all the nice ingredients - and now we are left with a big city with high taxes and bad weather where you can’t wear a flashy watch because someone will attack you with a machete
Here’s an actual expert taking about the risk of capital flight in the Telegraph.
I’m annoyed that he seems to have plagiarised some of my own ideas, but you know the feeling right?
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Don’t forget we have got Angela Rayner’s workers rights bill to come soon which won’t help.
The employers NI threshold fall had an effect on business and hiring decisions. The employment rights bill has been watered down significantly and most employers seem to be shrugging it off. Job security should in principle be a driver for consumer confidence, though I think that effect will be marginal too.
A quick check shows that real terms pay in the private and public sectors are growing at a rate well ahead of inflation.
The Tories really need to stop wibbling, and do some politics.
If private sector pay is rising, and you do not increase public sector pay, how will you recruit public sector employees?
Don't? There's enough of them already.
The good ones will leave (and always will, even if you pay market rate). You need to replace them and incentivise the crap ones to leave. There are ways of reducing headcount, I can think of a couple of quick wins in the DWP where I used to work, but to save big bucks you will need to decide which parts of government are no longer required, and close them down.
PB lefties talking about price rises PB righties talking about pay rises
Now:
PB lefties talking about pay rises PB righties talking about price rises
Yes the joy of opposition, you go from the country is doing well to the country is going to the dogs and a hellhole overnight after you lose a general election
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
The successful mathematical reasoning of AI (from Google summary):
National Trust annual membership for seniors (age 60 or over) is £72 for individual membership and £120.60 for joint membership. If you've been a member for at least the last three consecutive years, you can also apply for a 25% discount, bringing the price down to £72 for individual senior membership and £120.60 for joint senior membership.
Labour need to go a lot further on planning reform but they've made a good start. The Tories and Reform as best I can tell love NIMBYism or at least will do nothing to challenge it.
I am also confident they will go for zonal pricing which will make an impact on energy bills in some of the country where frankly it's ridiculous their bills aren't basically zero (i.e. Scotland).
What good start? They're mouthing good platitudes, but what have they actually done to liberate planning and cut the red tape?
To get concrete on the ground faster, we need concrete reform. Platitudes won't cut it.
This is something they should have been prepared for with a reform bill drafted ready to put before Parliament upon winning, instead a year has already passed and I just see crickets.
It was apparently the WFA changes that were going to kill millions of pensioners but it all seems to have gone out with a whimper. Just as the private school fee changes were apparently going to destroy the school system.
What is true is that whatever Labour's failings are (and there are many), there are a great number of people here and elsewhere who want them to fail and will oppose anything they do.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
Dire service from the DVLA / passport office?
only from the bits that haven’t been automated - because even complex things like emergency replacement passports are now simple if your details are in the system - eek twin a got an emergency travel document in 2 days and the delay was delivery time to our embassy in Basil
Renewing your driving licence
The passport office is wonderful, in my experience and that of friends. But I agree with the general direction of the post.
'We have to be seen to be doing something performative about trans kids..'
'I know, let's check them for autism and ADHD. Some kids have already been waiting for over a year for an assessment so we can lose the issue in the long grass.'
Thanks, a good summation. After sleeping on it for a night I think the point where the settler godmother Weiss shoves Theroux hard in the chest is pivotal, representing so much of what's happening in Israel (which includes Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon according to some of the ultras). She said at the end 'I wish you'd pushed me back', an unlikely event which would have no doubt inspired disproportionate retribution. Sound familiar?
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
The stupid Tories started this with Hunt fecking around with non dom status, but now Rachel from Accounts has made it ten times worse
It's the IHT rule change that's driving people away aiui.
As the telegraph notes it’s more the vibe in toto
The rise in CGT The IHT changes (certainly major) The attack on private schools The fecking around with non-dom
I would add in
Broad demographic changes in London which have now gone beyond “interestingly diverse”, plus Brexit (I say that as a leaver), plus a general malaise in British life
Put it all together and it’s toxic for mobile elite people in London and the SE. They’re not here for the weather are they?
Though ironically London and places like the Cotswolds have picked up a few rich liberal Democrats who hate Trump.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Don’t forget we have got Angela Rayner’s workers rights bill to come soon which won’t help.
The employers NI threshold fall had an effect on business and hiring decisions. The employment rights bill has been watered down significantly and most employers seem to be shrugging it off. Job security should in principle be a driver for consumer confidence, though I think that effect will be marginal too.
A quick check shows that real terms pay in the private and public sectors are growing at a rate well ahead of inflation.
The Tories really need to stop wibbling, and do some politics.
If private sector pay is rising, and you do not increase public sector pay, how will you recruit public sector employees?
Don't? There's enough of them already.
The good ones will leave (and always will, even if you pay market rate). You need to replace them and incentivise the crap ones to leave. There are ways of reducing headcount, I can think of a couple of quick wins in the DWP where I used to work, but to save big bucks you will need to decide which parts of government are no longer required, and close them down.
Departments have been cutting unnecessary areas for over a decade - got to say if you want to save money now you need to reduce what the Government does so pick the departments you want to close and the voters who you think are getting too much in benefits
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beach Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I suspect they are comfortable with Aunty Nige because Nige promises those gifts they desire but dare not ask for, like sending Johnny Foreigner home, selling off the NHS for tax cuts, reintroducing selective education at aged 11 and (although Nigel isn't on board yet) hanging Lucy Letby.
Albeit many Reform voters think Letby is innocent
How do we know that? I suspect quite a lot of people across the spectrum believe there is doubt in the case, at the least (I am one). But I don't recall a specific survey of voting intentions plus Letby beliefs...
There seems to be a desire to turn the Letby case into a culture war symbol. I come from the point of view that
1) There are questions. 2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system 3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past. 4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
I very strongly agree with you. The problem that most of us have is that there is a simple narrative out there - the 'chart', Letby being seen with distressed baby and doing nothing, etc but that narrative is increasingly suspect. The chart was constructed with a lot of back and forth and with cases being included and then excluded - it was not a simple (a) these are the 14 cases (b) who was on duty? (c) oh my God only Lucy was... And the evidence given by other staff in court is different to what they described in emails etc a lot closed in time to the events.
I think at the very least she deserves another go in court. Hopefully with some better advisers.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
The stupid Tories started this with Hunt fecking around with non dom status, but now Rachel from Accounts has made it ten times worse
It's the IHT rule change that's driving people away aiui.
The test for including non-UK assets owned by individuals and trustees within the scope of IHT will depend on whether the individual, or the settlor of the trust, is a ‘long-term resident’
This implies that these assets may be taxed both by the overseas tax authorities where they are lodged and by HMRC. Are there double taxation rules for this?
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
The turmoil in the markets started with Trump.
Ah, it’s all Trumps fault and labour are blameless 👍
That's really your take ? Certainly wasn't bondegezou's.
Fishing was right about economic optimism. It was falling well before the market correction and a lot of it is very much homegrown.
This is how the blame game works.
MAGA woman learns the tax code she hates so much was actually signed into law by Trump—then blames Obama.
HOST: You didn’t like Biden & Harris tax code? WOMAN: I did not. HOST: Would you ever vote for it again? WOMAN: No! HOST: It was Trump’s tax code. WOMAN: No! It was Obama's! It was Obama's! https://x.com/LongTimeHistory/status/1916635276698415602
This further highlights that most Maga are imbeciles who shouldn’t be allowed to vote . Not sure why some commentators want to apply alleged laudable reasons for their voting . We hear the poor downtrodden ,left behind victims of globalisation blah blah .
Commentators need to just call a spade a spade . The vast majority of Maga are low information , low IQ trailer trash .
I think Rochdale is right about this, though.
Just calling them cult members - however true, or satisfying - is not very productive. No one is going to persuade or educate very many of them, but the effort has to be made.
I think there's truth in that, but I think that commentators - especially here in the UK (naybe Western Europe) where we no longer understand Christendom at a gut level - underestimate how much that a big chunk of "MAGA" are part of what is effectively a cult.
A cult involves an irrational, ingrained commitment which will not be shifted at all easily, or via rational means. It will not be unpicked easily.
Just as there is validity, but not complete coherence, in comparing Trump's regime to the lists of characteristics of a fascist movements that @viewcode (iirc) hatesfinds distatsteful, the same goes for those lists of characteristics of a cult.
I'd identify especially those around eg excessive loyalty to a charismatic leader, isolation from the wider world, an us-vs-them mentality, suspension of critical faculties, and perhaps financial exploitation.
For parts of the MAGA religious wing, they have integrated their political policies with their theology - which is a mirror to political Islam.
One of my more esoteric comparisons of Trumpists is to the Bitterenders from the Boer War, who were so committed to their cause that they would rather see their society laid waste than give up their cause.
MAGA is a cult - no doubt about it. That is why Don't Look Up was such a brilliant piece of satire - openly mocking today's MAGA cult unable to accept what is right in front of them.
How do you break through? Change the narrative. They are attracted to MAGA and Reform and AfD and RN because these are the only parties who actually listen to them. Who even try to find solutions to their problems.
Progressive parties can't just attack these voters like Gordon Brown or Hillary Clinton. They have to accept that their lived reality IS reality (so stop sending Wes Streeting on the telly to patronise them) and find alternative solutions.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
Yes dear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is simply lying and pensioner cyclist @kjh off of pb.com and amateur winemaker @Tim Something of the same have got it all taped
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
Dire service from the DVLA / passport office?
only from the bits that haven’t been automated - because even complex things like emergency replacement passports are now simple if your details are in the system - eek twin a got an emergency travel document in 2 days and the delay was delivery time to our embassy in Basil
Equally DVLA has made the standard tasks simple, it’s when human beings and decisions are needed where things fall apart
DVLA and Passport Office work fine. The problem is with other agencies.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
If people want to work they find a way to get in to work, the bigger problem is that people don't want to work - and once someone isn't working, or not working much, it becomes habitual and their kids grow up in a home not seeing their parents working regularly so why should they when they grow up either?
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
There is no doubt about it that MAGA is a cult but it wasn't the cult that re-elected Trump it was the people in the middle who could have gone either way.
People really over-think this, if the economy is in a bad shape when Trump finishes up in the White House the Republicans will get destroyed.
Govts get the blame. Suspect numbers are so low in part because Lab supporters also feel gloomy thanks to Trump. The saving grace for Labour might be recent memories of Tory incompetence...
The latter simply means unhappy voters will go to Reform, or LibDem/Green, instead of turning to Kemi's lot.
What I find notable about the rise of the Fukkers is how unarsed the pb.com tories are about it as Mrs Badenough drives the tory charabanc off Beachy Head and sends their polling to Trussian levels. Even HYUFD seems to be chill with it because apparently KB might get a job as Welsh Secretary in Farage's cabinet.
I'm not a partisan Tory - I often vote Lib Dem in local elections - but I think my view is that the Tories have (deservedly) received a general election kicking that will - and should - keep them out of power for more than one election. So I am not sure it matters where the votes go. I despise the Fukkers but they are about to expose themselves as idiots by trying to run local councils. And in any case, the government is behaving more like a conservative government than the last one did, which pissed public money up against the wall with gay abandoned while simultaneously managing to hollow out public services.
At some point the tories are going to have to move past this feverish khlopomanstvo which has consumed them since 2016.
They can't out-fukk the Fukkers, particularly not with a perma-irked globalist DEI recruit at the helm.
Since 2019 the Tories have lost more voters to Reform than Labour and the LDs combined.
Hence if Kemi loses the next general election and assuming Farage hasn't won most seats with Kemi then DPM, the Conservatives likely move even further right under Jenrick to try and win back voters lost to Reform
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
Yes dear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is simply lying and pensioner cyclist @kjh off of pb.com and amateur winemaker @Tim Something of the same have got it all taped
Yeah but funnily enough pensioner cyclist and amateur winemaker @TimS actually had/have real jobs in addition to their hobbies where they knew about this stuff, because it was our jobs to know, whereas a travel journalist knows f*** all about and just reads snippets off of X.
I don't know but as a 3rd party who would I believe. I know, those who have knowledge of the subject and not a travel journalist.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
PB lefties talking about price rises PB righties talking about pay rises
Now:
PB lefties talking about pay rises PB righties talking about price rises
Yes the joy of opposition, you go from the country is doing well to the country is going to the dogs and a hellhole overnight after you lose a general election
60s.
Both Labour and Tories have done this. The Tories left the finances in pretty good shape in 1997, but the services were a mess. Labour banged on about the Tories for the next 13 years. Labour left a huge financial black hole in 2010, but the services were not in bad shape and the Tories banged on about the disastrous state of the economy for the next 14 years. And now Labour is doing the same - e.g. the 20 billion black hole...
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
The public transport thing is often the key. People fall on hard times and no longer can afford a car, or maybe the ex took it with him. Here in leafy Hampshire there is f*** all local transport, and you can't get to work unless it's for one of the businesses in the town centre.
But when I was working, we were in a period of 10% inflation. I would have expected a stream of people in the Jobcentre needing to earn a few hundred pounds extra a month to pay the bills. Did I f***. Nada. Zilch.
While you can argue about the marginal rate, you are always better off if you work and are on UC. Just find a part time job you can walk to. (And yes some people can, it depends where you live)
We have also moved on from benefits supporting sick and disabled people too work part time, if that is all they are able to, to thinking they are owed a living.
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Don’t forget we have got Angela Rayner’s workers rights bill to come soon which won’t help.
The employers NI threshold fall had an effect on business and hiring decisions. The employment rights bill has been watered down significantly and most employers seem to be shrugging it off. Job security should in principle be a driver for consumer confidence, though I think that effect will be marginal too.
A quick check shows that real terms pay in the private and public sectors are growing at a rate well ahead of inflation.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Don’t forget we have got Angela Rayner’s workers rights bill to come soon which won’t help.
The employers NI threshold fall had an effect on business and hiring decisions. The employment rights bill has been watered down significantly and most employers seem to be shrugging it off. Job security should in principle be a driver for consumer confidence, though I think that effect will be marginal too.
A quick check shows that real terms pay in the private and public sectors are growing at a rate well ahead of inflation.
The Tories really need to stop wibbling, and do some politics.
If private sector pay is rising, and you do not increase public sector pay, how will you recruit public sector employees?
Don't? There's enough of them already.
The good ones will leave (and always will, even if you pay market rate). You need to replace them and incentivise the crap ones to leave. There are ways of reducing headcount, I can think of a couple of quick wins in the DWP where I used to work, but to save big bucks you will need to decide which parts of government are no longer required, and close them down.
Depends.
There are three models of headcount reduction I can think of. One is that there are people being employed who are essentially decorative or speculative, who can be erased with nobody noticing. If you were to tell me that that was the case in the more glamorous bits of law and finance, I wouldn't be shocked. It's not my world, so I don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked. I don't think it is the case in the public sector, and if it is then shame on Cameron, Osborne, Sunak and the rest of them.
Another is that there are people doing jobs that shouldn't be being done- the Golgafrincham B Ark types. Douglas Adams neatly skewered them and their critics- yes they are ghastly and absurd, but no they're not pointless. Every annoying regulation is there for a reason, even Ofsted, and you need to be damn sure what that reason was before ripping it out.
The third is what we tend to get. Most public sector workers are doing stuff that the public wants done. You can sometimes get more work from fewer people by better equipment and training, but not always and it costs upfront. So at some level, we get creeping enshiffication. As we have seen.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
Yes dear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is simply lying and pensioner cyclist @kjh off of pb.com and amateur winemaker @Tim Something of the same have got it all taped
Yeah but funnily enough pensioner cyclist and amateur winemaker @TimS actually had/have real jobs in addition to their hobbies where they knew about this stuff, because it was our jobs to know, whereas a travel journalist knows f*** all about and just reads snippets off of X.
I don't know but as a 3rd party who would I believe. I know, those who have knowledge of the subject and not a travel journalist.
Arguing with you is like arguing with a slightly brain damaged beach donkey: it’s not benefiting either of us, I don’t gain intellectually from talking to a donkey, and you have a beach to walk down, very slowly, again and again and again
Canadians are sooooooo due a change election, and the swap leader out at last moment gimmick was never going to work.
Nor will electing liberals be seen as necessary to combat Trump. As we see with UK, people who will never vote Starmer still rally to the flag when under attack from Trump, but rally to government and flag energy, expressing something positive about Starmer, doesn’t transfer to real votes for Starmer or his party.
The "change in government" has already happened with a new Prime Minister, who is actively getting rid of unpopular policies such as the Carbon Tax.
In Australia, it is very common, particularly at the State level, for old & unpopular governments to swap out leaders and get one more election victory. For example, in New South Wales, the Bob Carr Labor government had been in power for 10 years and was becoming unpopular by 2005. The Party swapped out the Premier to Morris Iemma, who then changed some of Carr's policies, such as eliminating a vendor tax on properties, and was then able to reverse a polling deficit & win the 2007 State Election.
Worked here for the Tories in 1992 (Thatcher to Major) and 2019 (May to Johnson). Didn't work Johnson to Sunak via Truss - or Wilson to Callaghan for Labour. Nor Blair to Brown.
The key factor is the opposition leader.
Truss to Sunak would have worked if Corbyn or Rebecca Long-Bailey had been opposition leader. It didn't work because Keir Starmer was a bland reassuring centrist.
Also, of course, sometimes the political & economic situation is just so bad that people want a change of government, no matter who is opposition leader.
I don't think that either Canada or Australia are currently in an economic situation where voters would vote for anyone who is leader of the opposition.
Regarding Canada, I think if Erin O'Toole hadn't been forced out from the Conservative leadership, then there would have been a significantly higher chance of a polling miss & a change in government. O'Toole is exactly the type of safe reassuring centrist whom people are comfortable electing as a new Prime Minister.
Perhaps though Poilievre has squeezed the PPC vote to his right too.
Thatcher, Abbott and nearly Corbyn also won or near won in parliamentary democracies from opposition on non centrist platforms
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
Dire service from the DVLA / passport office?
only from the bits that haven’t been automated - because even complex things like emergency replacement passports are now simple if your details are in the system - eek twin a got an emergency travel document in 2 days and the delay was delivery time to our embassy in Basil
Equally DVLA has made the standard tasks simple, it’s when human beings and decisions are needed where things fall apart
DVLA and Passport Office work fine. The problem is with other agencies.
DVSA on the other hand seems completely uninterested in doing anything concrete to fix the driving test backlog.
The passport office was dire a few years ago & at some point the Home Office put somebody competent in charge & got a grip on the situation.
I think bureaucracies can fail in two ways - one is by not having enough capacity to meet the demand for the administrative work Parliament has given them to carry out. Sometimes that is down to a mulish workforce, but more often it’s just bad management of the existing workforce, or a simple lack of capacity due to lack of funding which the bureaucracy itself can’t fix.
The second is when circumstances change (as in the driving test situation) and the bureaucracy is simply unable to conceptualise the necessary changes to their approach to the world that would enable them to remain effective. An outside context problem for a bureaucracy leaves them thrashing away filling in the same forms days after day to no effect whatsoever on reality, no matter how hard they work the workforce.
Fixing the latter requires leadership that understands the necessity of change & politicians likewise. Career wise it’s much safer to do nothing & point to how effective you are at pushing the paper around when asked why nothing works unfortunately.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
If people want to work they find a way to get in to work, the bigger problem is that people don't want to work - and once someone isn't working, or not working much, it becomes habitual and their kids grow up in a home not seeing their parents working regularly so why should they when they grow up either?
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
The effective marginal tax rate won't be that high, means tested benefits and PIP are not taxable. So you have the tax free allowance to play with, and the NI equivalent. And if you have kids or are deemed to have Limited Capability for Work you can earn £400 before the taper kicks in, more if you are not claiming housing costs
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
Tangential point, but related. I went to the rugby at Bath with my dad on saturday. Now it is top flight rugby, so equivalent to Liverpool vs Tottenham, and the prices for tickets are very high (over 100 quid for some seats) but I was struck by how old the crowd was. Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
We have a huge problem with housing and it knocks on to other areas. If young people can't afford a house they probably aren't going out spending money elsewhere either. I think the Tories almost had the right idea with the bedroom tax. Time to tax the fuckers living in huge houses bought cheap 40 years ago and with five spare bedrooms. Give the money to the kids who can't buy houses.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
Yes dear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is simply lying and pensioner cyclist @kjh off of pb.com and amateur winemaker @Tim Something of the same have got it all taped
Yeah but funnily enough pensioner cyclist and amateur winemaker @TimS actually had/have real jobs in addition to their hobbies where they knew about this stuff, because it was our jobs to know, whereas a travel journalist knows f*** all about and just reads snippets off of X.
I don't know but as a 3rd party who would I believe. I know, those who have knowledge of the subject and not a travel journalist.
Arguing with you is like arguing with a slightly brain damaged beach donkey: it’s not benefiting either of us, I don’t gain intellectually from talking to a donkey, and you have a beach to walk down, very slowly, again and again and again
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
Though more getting old in the first place is also evidence of higher average wealth and better healthcare in that nation
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
That is true but residential houses are exempt from CGT so this only applies to 2nd homes and it is a payment on account so it depends whether the reporting is of receipts or final returns.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
Tangential point, but related. I went to the rugby at Bath with my dad on saturday. Now it is top flight rugby, so equivalent to Liverpool vs Tottenham, and the prices for tickets are very high (over 100 quid for some seats) but I was struck by how old the crowd was. Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
We have a huge problem with housing and it knocks on to other areas. If young people can't afford a house they probably aren't going out spending money elsewhere either. I think the Tories almost had the right idea with the bedroom tax. Time to tax the fuckers living in huge houses bought cheap 40 years ago and with five spare bedrooms. Give the money to the kids who can't buy houses.
Of course, the infamous 'bedroom tax' was merely a change to the housing-benefit calculation in relation to council-house tenants. The real thing - taxing households for having spare rooms - would be politically daring.
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
Tangential point, but related. I went to the rugby at Bath with my dad on saturday. Now it is top flight rugby, so equivalent to Liverpool vs Tottenham, and the prices for tickets are very high (over 100 quid for some seats) but I was struck by how old the crowd was. Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
We have a huge problem with housing and it knocks on to other areas. If young people can't afford a house they probably aren't going out spending money elsewhere either. I think the Tories almost had the right idea with the bedroom tax. Time to tax the fuckers living in huge houses bought cheap 40 years ago and with five spare bedrooms. Give the money to the kids who can't buy houses.
Speaking as an old git (who only lives in a one bed flat, hah, and even then less than half the year) I entirely agree
Society needs to be completely rebalanced in favour of the young - and British born young - not endless more young migrants who arrived yesterday
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
If people want to work they find a way to get in to work, the bigger problem is that people don't want to work - and once someone isn't working, or not working much, it becomes habitual and their kids grow up in a home not seeing their parents working regularly so why should they when they grow up either?
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
As an advocate for Universal Basic Income I see your significant reforms and raise you some massive reforms...
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
Though more getting old in the first place is also evidence of higher average wealth and better healthcare in that nation
Even if we also need a birthrate closer to replacement level again
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
@TimS . Detail, detail. @leon won't be interested in detail. It isn't a one liner on X.
PS not a slight on @Fishing whose post was spot on and added to the discussion.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
Dire service from the DVLA / passport office?
only from the bits that haven’t been automated - because even complex things like emergency replacement passports are now simple if your details are in the system - eek twin a got an emergency travel document in 2 days and the delay was delivery time to our embassy in Basil
Equally DVLA has made the standard tasks simple, it’s when human beings and decisions are needed where things fall apart
DVLA and Passport Office work fine. The problem is with other agencies.
Both the DVLA and Passport office had significant process upgrades after ridiculous delays became a political matter.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
Yes dear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is simply lying and pensioner cyclist @kjh off of pb.com and amateur winemaker @Tim Something of the same have got it all taped
Yeah but funnily enough pensioner cyclist and amateur winemaker @TimS actually had/have real jobs in addition to their hobbies where they knew about this stuff, because it was our jobs to know, whereas a travel journalist knows f*** all about and just reads snippets off of X.
I don't know but as a 3rd party who would I believe. I know, those who have knowledge of the subject and not a travel journalist.
Arguing with you is like arguing with a slightly brain damaged beach donkey: it’s not benefiting either of us, I don’t gain intellectually from talking to a donkey, and you have a beach to walk down, very slowly, again and again and again
I suggest we move on
Once again, as usual, you have your arse handed to you and you give up. Still the right thing to do.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Don’t forget we have got Angela Rayner’s workers rights bill to come soon which won’t help.
The employers NI threshold fall had an effect on business and hiring decisions. The employment rights bill has been watered down significantly and most employers seem to be shrugging it off. Job security should in principle be a driver for consumer confidence, though I think that effect will be marginal too.
A quick check shows that real terms pay in the private and public sectors are growing at a rate well ahead of inflation.
The Tories really need to stop wibbling, and do some politics.
If private sector pay is rising, and you do not increase public sector pay, how will you recruit public sector employees?
Don't? There's enough of them already.
The good ones will leave (and always will, even if you pay market rate). You need to replace them and incentivise the crap ones to leave. There are ways of reducing headcount, I can think of a couple of quick wins in the DWP where I used to work, but to save big bucks you will need to decide which parts of government are no longer required, and close them down.
Depends.
There are three models of headcount reduction I can think of. One is that there are people being employed who are essentially decorative or speculative, who can be erased with nobody noticing. If you were to tell me that that was the case in the more glamorous bits of law and finance, I wouldn't be shocked. It's not my world, so I don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked. I don't think it is the case in the public sector, and if it is then shame on Cameron, Osborne, Sunak and the rest of them.
Another is that there are people doing jobs that shouldn't be being done- the Golgafrincham B Ark types. Douglas Adams neatly skewered them and their critics- yes they are ghastly and absurd, but no they're not pointless. Every annoying regulation is there for a reason, even Ofsted, and you need to be damn sure what that reason was before ripping it out.
The third is what we tend to get. Most public sector workers are doing stuff that the public wants done. You can sometimes get more work from fewer people by better equipment and training, but not always and it costs upfront. So at some level, we get creeping enshiffication. As we have seen.
Here is my take on DWP. They are prioritising "front line staff". So far, so good. The DWP has a big tail. Although that is partly because of the complexity of the benefit system.
Take 1. The UC system is much better than anything we have had before. But work coaches spend hours of their lives tinkering with it. It can be automated as a few things have been done, successfully. However not enough resource is put into doing so. Double it. At least. Take the resource from the "front line" if necessary, it will pay off.
Take 2. DWP has a deal with the treasury that it is funded to cover x amount if talking to customers. This obviously does not incentivise efficiency as it tends to encourage bums on seats. The DWP should not be paid to talk to people, it should be paid to get them into work. However that won't happen, partly because of the idiocy of the Treasury, partly because the DWP mandarins won't want their bonuses to actually depend on performance, ie getting people into work
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
I have thanked everybody by name who mentioned the hyperliberalism article, both pro- and con, on the article page. Thank you for your attention and I hope you enjoyed reading it.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
If people want to work they find a way to get in to work, the bigger problem is that people don't want to work - and once someone isn't working, or not working much, it becomes habitual and their kids grow up in a home not seeing their parents working regularly so why should they when they grow up either?
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
As an advocate for Universal Basic Income I see your significant reforms and raise you some massive reforms...
I've been an advocate for UBI since I did my degree a quarter of a century ago. Though then I knew it by the term Milton Friedman gave it - a negative income tax.
The term UBI has been embraced by the left so many on the right react instinctively against it. But there are solid right wing arguments in its favour, as argued by Friedman and others.
The Laffer Curve applies too when people are facing upto 100% real marginal tax rates.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
@TimS . Detail, detail. @leon won't be interested in detail. It isn't a one liner on X.
PS not a slight on @Fishing whose post was spot on and added to the discussion.
I’m posting for the benefit of the whole readership. It’s an interesting and important topic, because getting the balance right between taxing a fair share to keep the country from falling apart, and overtaxing which then drives people away or stops them spending, it a really difficult one. Nobody has worked out the right balance. Many think they have, but they’re wrong.
One thing, related quite closely to the problem of our ageing population, is the fact we have shifted the money in the economy from income to wealth. Incomes have been largely flat, but wealth has increased and debt reduced in almost all of the population. Whether tax can redress that I don’t know. It’s much harder to tax financial prudence than it is to tax spendthrifts.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
Yes dear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is simply lying and pensioner cyclist @kjh off of pb.com and amateur winemaker @Tim Something of the same have got it all taped
Yeah but funnily enough pensioner cyclist and amateur winemaker @TimS actually had/have real jobs in addition to their hobbies where they knew about this stuff, because it was our jobs to know, whereas a travel journalist knows f*** all about and just reads snippets off of X.
I don't know but as a 3rd party who would I believe. I know, those who have knowledge of the subject and not a travel journalist.
Arguing with you is like arguing with a slightly brain damaged beach donkey: it’s not benefiting either of us, I don’t gain intellectually from talking to a donkey, and you have a beach to walk down, very slowly, again and again and again
I suggest we move on
Once again, as usual, you have your arse handed to you and you give up. Still the right thing to do.
Given that you’re now blushingly trying to defend your point against someone else, and failing, this ain’t really true, is it?
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
Yep. Don't expect @leon to get anything right. Just superficial reading of X. No analysis. No IQ.
“Capital gains tax receipts fall 10% as wealthy exit UK”
That was lazy journalism. It’s a non sequitur. The wealthy may or may not be leaving the UK, but that has no bearing whatsoever on this year’s CGT revenue.
I have to deal with this sort of journalistic agenda driven writing quite often, it’s quite common in tax articles, though it’s usually when the Telegraph are doing a piece.
No, it’s because you’re too stupid to grasp that the really rich move proactively. It’s one reason they are really rich
Even if we were to suppose that people in 2023 were leaving the country in anticipation of a Labour election victory - and given that its my job to know what they’re doing and my private client colleagues report to me regularly on activity levels so that I can then talk to journalists about it, I know what’s happening as it is happening…but anyway, when it does happen the immediate impact on disposals - and hence the following year’s CGT - is either neutral or positive.
Actually what’s happened so far is that some ultra high net worth individuals left after the non-dom changes were confirmed (though note they benefit from a transition period so they was no need to hurry). Nobody left based on expected CGT changes. The ultra rich don’t need to worry about that stuff.
I’m not arguing that tax isn’t price-elastic. I’m saying the CGT data this year have nothing to do with people leaving the country.
You are wasting your time @TimS . @leon is too stupid to understand detail.
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
Yes dear, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is simply lying and pensioner cyclist @kjh off of pb.com and amateur winemaker @Tim Something of the same have got it all taped
Yeah but funnily enough pensioner cyclist and amateur winemaker @TimS actually had/have real jobs in addition to their hobbies where they knew about this stuff, because it was our jobs to know, whereas a travel journalist knows f*** all about and just reads snippets off of X.
I don't know but as a 3rd party who would I believe. I know, those who have knowledge of the subject and not a travel journalist.
Arguing with you is like arguing with a slightly brain damaged beach donkey: it’s not benefiting either of us, I don’t gain intellectually from talking to a donkey, and you have a beach to walk down, very slowly, again and again and again
I suggest we move on
Once again, as usual, you have your arse handed to you and you give up. Still the right thing to do.
Given that you’re now blushingly trying to defend your point against someone else, and failing, this ain’t really true, is it?
LOL Did you read my reply and @TimS reply to @Fishing ?
No of course not. You can't read or understand more than one sentence at a time.
Again sit down, get your brain up to speed. Read it slowly and try and take in the detail.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
The high street is dead because people only want to do small shopping and buy coffee etc in person. They get everything they can, delivered.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
If people want to work they find a way to get in to work, the bigger problem is that people don't want to work - and once someone isn't working, or not working much, it becomes habitual and their kids grow up in a home not seeing their parents working regularly so why should they when they grow up either?
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
The effective marginal tax rate won't be that high, means tested benefits and PIP are not taxable. So you have the tax free allowance to play with, and the NI equivalent. And if you have kids or are deemed to have Limited Capability for Work you can earn £400 before the taper kicks in, more if you are not claiming housing costs
The effective marginal tax rate is that high.
If you are earning above the threshold from a part time job, which is not many hours even on minimum wage, then you face both taxes and taper simultaneously which makes the effective marginal tax rate literally that high.
Without even considering the fact that going to work costs money as well as time and effort. People need to pay for transport, and quite possibly childcare etc. So if you feel you're not taking any more money home by working, and it's hard, and it's going to costs you, then people being rational beings decide not to bother.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
Benefits need to be cut in terms of who gets them, I'm open to increasing the amount once we have stopped paying benefits to people who are merely a bit sad or a bit hyperactive.
Public sector productivity is worse than ever and we have more people working for the state than ever. The two are intrinsically linked, we need to think about what the state does and stop doing some (a lot) of it. Again I'll go back to the box tickers, we keep thinking about it from the perspective of who ticks this particular box rather than does the box even need to exist. We're now in the position where there's so many people working for the state that they just create their own micro bureaucracy to justify their own jobs and then hire themselves underlings to do it while they think of ever more methods to justify their salary and pension.
It's time to swing a gigantic axe to the whole lot of it. There's a lot of people doing busy work in the public sector just looking to pick up a salary and pension, they probably work hard but what they do makes precisely zero difference to users of public services and in a lot of cases it will be negative because those people create additional hoops for service users to jump through to justify their salaries.
On pensions, a 40% haircut to DB public sector pensions, rebalance the mental DC pensions away from contributions to salary, means test the state pension so that anyone in the higher rate tax bracket has it tapered away from £50k to £70k and people with more than £70k in retirement income don't get it at all. Use a portion of those savings to increase the state pension value by 20% where the extra money will be literally life changing for people who survive on very little.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
I'm not sure about the details of that particular Mao comparison, given that Mao's followers in 1965+ would have been more likely to be the "troublemakers" in the room rather than the ejectors, but...it has occurred to me that Mao may well be in the air and perhaps he is a better comparator for the current fascist drift than the earlier moustachioed guy from Austria and chin-jutter from Italy.
Perhaps behind the Leninism of Steve Bannon and Michael Gove and the "smash it all up and build the new regime starting from the car park" of Dominic Cummings...the real inspirer is Mao?
When the "single AI answer" was introduced recently with a fancy presentation at the top of the offerings supplied by Google's websearch engine, I straightaway thought of this:
AI has answered! Bow down before it! AI brings light!
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Yes - they have started buying existing business.
Round the corner from me, a chap sold up his barber shop, for a ridiculous amount and retired. Redone in a bizarre gilt & black style. Still the usual handful of customers - but not enough to pay for the huge price.
He was from Cyprus, so the business has a nice long history with the banks of sending money abroad.....
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
Your friend was hallucinating. The low point for median age post WW2 was 1975, and it was 33 years, in 2024 it was 40 years.
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
@TimS . Detail, detail. @leon won't be interested in detail. It isn't a one liner on X.
PS not a slight on @Fishing whose post was spot on and added to the discussion.
I’m posting for the benefit of the whole readership. It’s an interesting and important topic, because getting the balance right between taxing a fair share to keep the country from falling apart, and overtaxing which then drives people away or stops them spending, it a really difficult one. Nobody has worked out the right balance. Many think they have, but they’re wrong.
One thing, related quite closely to the problem of our ageing population, is the fact we have shifted the money in the economy from income to wealth. Incomes have been largely flat, but wealth has increased and debt reduced in almost all of the population. Whether tax can redress that I don’t know. It’s much harder to tax financial prudence than it is to tax spendthrifts.
@TimS I don't think I am adding to the debate. Your posts are far more eloquent. I just get angry at idiots (again not @fishing obviously) who post a snippet they pick up as fact. @leon is the classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect to a tee.
I suspect @leon has never even encountered CGT in real life or has any knowledge of tax whatsoever or any economic background.
Yesterday was another example. On regular occasions he posts about us all being a simulation. He is 60 odd year old man. How many of us didn't have those feelings when we were 10 years old? It is a bit pathetic.
The successful mathematical reasoning of AI (from Google summary):
National Trust annual membership for seniors (age 60 or over) is £72 for individual membership and £120.60 for joint membership. If you've been a member for at least the last three consecutive years, you can also apply for a 25% discount, bringing the price down to £72 for individual senior membership and £120.60 for joint senior membership.
When you go to a NT property, it never changes. All that old stuff all the time.
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
Your friend was hallucinating. The low point for median age post WW2 was 1975, and it was 33 years, in 2024 it was 40 years.
He was hallucinating. I probably should have chosen a demographic expert friend not on acid
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
@TimS . Detail, detail. @leon won't be interested in detail. It isn't a one liner on X.
PS not a slight on @Fishing whose post was spot on and added to the discussion.
I’m posting for the benefit of the whole readership. It’s an interesting and important topic, because getting the balance right between taxing a fair share to keep the country from falling apart, and overtaxing which then drives people away or stops them spending, it a really difficult one. Nobody has worked out the right balance. Many think they have, but they’re wrong.
One thing, related quite closely to the problem of our ageing population, is the fact we have shifted the money in the economy from income to wealth. Incomes have been largely flat, but wealth has increased and debt reduced in almost all of the population. Whether tax can redress that I don’t know. It’s much harder to tax financial prudence than it is to tax spendthrifts.
@TimS I don't think I am adding to the debate. Your posts are far more eloquent. I just get angry at idiots (again not @fishing obviously) who post a snippet they pick up as fact. @leon is the classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect to a tee.
I suspect @leon has never even encountered CGT in real life or has any knowledge of tax whatsoever or any economic background.
Yesterday was another example. On regular occasions he posts about us all being a simulation. He is 60 odd year old man. How many of us didn't have those feelings when we were 10 years old? It is a bit pathetic.
Probably most of us didn't. I think even at that tender age I'd have realised Nick Bostrom was a piss-taker.
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
Fuck me, the level of analysis this morning is poor. The employment rate in the UK is nearly the highest it's ever been, is very high in international comparison, and most of those not in the labour supply are minted early retirees and students. The extreme level of whining about workshy claimants is wildly out of proportion to their impact on the public finances.
I'm not even going to touch the bollocks around CGT. My only observation is a country set up to retain the rich entrenches inequality and is ultimately unsustainable. There will be a crunch sooner or later, as you run out of middle income people to tax and end up with an untouchable highly mobile elite and an underclass of people in poverty who cannot contribute any tax.
I'm not sure about the details of that particular Mao comparison, given that Mao's followers in 1965+ would have been more likely to be the "troublemakers" in the room rather than the ejectors, but...it has occurred to me that Mao may well be in the air and perhaps he is a better comparator for the current fascist drift than the earlier moustachioed guy from Austria and chin-jutter from Italy.
Perhaps behind the Leninism of Steve Bannon and Michael Gove and the "smash it all up and build the new regime starting from the car park" of Dominic Cummings...the real inspirer is Mao?
When the "single AI answer" was introduced recently with a fancy presentation at the top of the offerings supplied by Google's websearch engine, I straightaway thought of this:
AI has answered! Bow down before it! AI brings light!
So when Trump has a China problem, the only issue is - which era?
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
I think this is absolutely right. There is an optimism and dynamism that comes with having a younger population - I have three children aged 12-18 and I love their energy and the sense of the world opening up for them. But at the same time there is no iron rule that says we have to become grumpy and insular as we get older. Especially as our society ages, I think it behoves us all to try to stay young in our attitudes - keep learning, keep engaging, keep taking risks.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Two of my daughters are mad for bubble tea. Chosen outlet is a weird-smelling Chinese shop in the back streets. I don’t think this one is a front – it largely caters to the HK immigrants, of whom we have a huge number. We also have weird artisanal cake shops – and also ‘dessert bars’. My take is that he former are set up by hopelessly optimistic amateur bakers looking to monetise their (impressive, but uncommercial) hobby; the latter are set up by hopelessly optimistic Muslims in the expectation that a business model which works in teetotal countries will transfer to the UK. Neither tend to last long.
My main objection to the vape shops, American candy stores, and Turkish barbers is that they are so ugly. If I was operating a front organisation, I wouldn’t plaster it in flashing lights and bright pinks.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
@TimS . Detail, detail. @leon won't be interested in detail. It isn't a one liner on X.
PS not a slight on @Fishing whose post was spot on and added to the discussion.
I’m posting for the benefit of the whole readership. It’s an interesting and important topic, because getting the balance right between taxing a fair share to keep the country from falling apart, and overtaxing which then drives people away or stops them spending, it a really difficult one. Nobody has worked out the right balance. Many think they have, but they’re wrong.
One thing, related quite closely to the problem of our ageing population, is the fact we have shifted the money in the economy from income to wealth. Incomes have been largely flat, but wealth has increased and debt reduced in almost all of the population. Whether tax can redress that I don’t know. It’s much harder to tax financial prudence than it is to tax spendthrifts.
@TimS I don't think I am adding to the debate. Your posts are far more eloquent. I just get angry at idiots (again not @fishing obviously) who post a snippet they pick up as fact. @leon is the classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect to a tee.
I suspect @leon has never even encountered CGT in real life or has any knowledge of tax whatsoever or any economic background.
Yesterday was another example. On regular occasions he posts about us all being a simulation. He is 60 odd year old man. How many of us didn't have those feelings when we were 10 years old? It is a bit pathetic.
Probably most of us didn't. I think even at that tender age I'd have realised Nick Bostrom was a piss-taker.
I unfortunately didn't have that opportunity. I was ten, ten years before he was born
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
You need to look at the OBR website, which lists residential prices and transactions as a significant driver of CGT. If the ultra-rich are fleeing and landlords shutting up shop, as all the evidence is they are, it would seem entirely consistent with Occam's razor that CGT would plunge.
I'm not saying your explanation is invalid - both could be true, thanks to the appalling economic incompetence we've had to put up with in this country for the last quarter century.
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
Your friend was hallucinating. The low point for median age post WW2 was 1975, and it was 33 years, in 2024 it was 40 years.
He was hallucinating. I probably should have chosen a demographic expert friend not on acid
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Yes - they have started buying existing business.
Round the corner from me, a chap sold up his barber shop, for a ridiculous amount and retired. Redone in a bizarre gilt & black style. Still the usual handful of customers - but not enough to pay for the huge price.
He was from Cyprus, so the business has a nice long history with the banks of sending money abroad.....
I know this is bad and wrong and all, but I’d rather have a high street with fake artisanal macaroon shops with pretty shopfronts all open for business, than half the street boarded up and scribbled with graffiti as the tumbleweed rolls over the homeless
I wonder if councils and cops make the same calculation. “They’re probably fake but it’s better than the alternative”
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
@TimS . Detail, detail. @leon won't be interested in detail. It isn't a one liner on X.
PS not a slight on @Fishing whose post was spot on and added to the discussion.
I’m posting for the benefit of the whole readership. It’s an interesting and important topic, because getting the balance right between taxing a fair share to keep the country from falling apart, and overtaxing which then drives people away or stops them spending, it a really difficult one. Nobody has worked out the right balance. Many think they have, but they’re wrong.
One thing, related quite closely to the problem of our ageing population, is the fact we have shifted the money in the economy from income to wealth. Incomes have been largely flat, but wealth has increased and debt reduced in almost all of the population. Whether tax can redress that I don’t know. It’s much harder to tax financial prudence than it is to tax spendthrifts.
@TimS I don't think I am adding to the debate. Your posts are far more eloquent. I just get angry at idiots (again not @fishing obviously) who post a snippet they pick up as fact. @leon is the classic example of the Dunning Kruger effect to a tee.
I suspect @leon has never even encountered CGT in real life or has any knowledge of tax whatsoever or any economic background.
Yesterday was another example. On regular occasions he posts about us all being a simulation. He is 60 odd year old man. How many of us didn't have those feelings when we were 10 years old? It is a bit pathetic.
He’s a provocateur and enjoys an argument. And this is a political betting sure after all, so fair enough.
He is also correct that I am an amateur vigneron. And very nervous as we enter the perfect storm of a hot week encouraging all the leaves out, followed by a cold plunge and very likely some frost.
And with that it’s time for me to board the plan to Chicago where it’s going to be 15C and wet.
The successful mathematical reasoning of AI (from Google summary):
National Trust annual membership for seniors (age 60 or over) is £72 for individual membership and £120.60 for joint membership. If you've been a member for at least the last three consecutive years, you can also apply for a 25% discount, bringing the price down to £72 for individual senior membership and £120.60 for joint senior membership.
When you go to a NT property, it never changes. All that old stuff all the time.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Two of my daughters are mad for bubble tea. Chosen outlet is a weird-smelling Chinese shop in the back streets. I don’t think this one is a front – it largely caters to the HK immigrants, of whom we have a huge number. We also have weird artisanal cake shops – and also ‘dessert bars’. My take is that he former are set up by hopelessly optimistic amateur bakers looking to monetise their (impressive, but uncommercial) hobby; the latter are set up by hopelessly optimistic Muslims in the expectation that a business model which works in teetotal countries will transfer to the UK. Neither tend to last long.
My main objection to the vape shops, American candy stores, and Turkish barbers is that they are so ugly. If I was operating a front organisation, I wouldn’t plaster it in flashing lights and bright pinks.
Yes exactly. I find them much easier to tolerate if they make a tiny bit of effort to be attractive. The bubble tea outlets and dessert bars (we have them as well) generally do, the hideous candy stores and vape shops, never
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Yes - they have started buying existing business.
Round the corner from me, a chap sold up his barber shop, for a ridiculous amount and retired. Redone in a bizarre gilt & black style. Still the usual handful of customers - but not enough to pay for the huge price.
He was from Cyprus, so the business has a nice long history with the banks of sending money abroad.....
I know this is bad and wrong and all, but I’d rather have a high street with fake artisanal macaroon shops with pretty shopfronts all open for business, than half the street boarded up and scribbled with graffiti as the tumbleweed rolls over the homeless
I wonder if councils and cops make the same calculation. “They’re probably fake but it’s better than the alternative”
The barber (and similar) shops are paying their council tax. They are paying utilities. They are paying lots and lots of tax. They are even employing people.
The existence of their customers is the one fly in the ointment.
From the prospect of the government (local and national), it's getting to tax (and socialise) the proceeds of crime. What's not to like?
EDIT: For many years, illegal building work has been ignored. Im taking about sites where you can see from the road enough to get them shut down. The inspectors only inspect the legit sites.
I just asked a demographic expert friend my question
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
My guess is you'd probably have to go back to the late nineteenth century, to get a median age of 25.
Interesting thanks. I shall chastise my demographic expert friend
Also interesting that, in that case, it coincides with Empire. Thats when you export people
Rates of mortality fell sharply in the nineteenth century. Birthrates also declined, but more slowly, so the population exploded, even with mass migration. The UK (and increasingly, the rest of Europe), simply had a massive surplus population. That's how governments were able to conscript vast numbers of young men, and feed them into the meat grinder.
You could lose a million young men in war, but the population would just bounce back.
It didn't START in America - economic optimism has been crashing since Labour started talking down the economy and then kicked the private sector in the balls with their disastrous budget and employment regulations and various other socialist stupidities. And the lower energy prices that Trump's incompetence has caused may actually help us more than the reduction in trade hurts. It's not clear how that will play out yet.
Unlike Labour's incompetence, which is plain for everybody to see.
Trump probably hasn't helped much, but this is almost entirely home-grown.
Income from Capital Gains Tax is DOWN even as the Tax has gone up. The Laffer Curve is real and Labour have comprehensively fucked the economy
Income from CGT this January is for disposals made between April 2023 and April 2024.
There will be an increase in CGT in Jan 2026 because individuals were liquidating gains ahead of an expected rate rise.
Then there will be a drop in CGT take in Jan 2027 as those timing differences unwind.
No. Residential property capital gains, which are taxed more heavily, need to be paid within two months of the sale. So very likely Leon is right as the high-end housing market has cratered since last year.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
We’re getting deep into suppositions upon suppositions here. The vast majority - vast vast majority - of wealth held by the ultra rich is in equities and alternative investments. CGT goes up and down like the tide based on expectations of tax rate rises and falls, and the performance of equities.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
You need to look at the OBR website, which lists residential prices and transactions as a significant driver of CGT. If the ultra-rich are fleeing and landlords shutting up shop, as all the evidence is they are, it would seem entirely consistent with Occam's razor that CGT would plunge.
I'm not saying your explanation is invalid - both could be true, thanks to the appalling economic incompetence we've had to put up with in this country for the last quarter century.
The CGT rate on residential property is not changing. In fact, relative to other assets, property is now more attractive.
Tbh, if Labour did threaten a future change in CGT on residential property, it would probably crash house prices and I would certainly consider selling my BtL flat to my tenant (a friend) to avoid the increased bill, if they have a deposit ready. Shit for me, brilliant news for renters.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Two of my daughters are mad for bubble tea. Chosen outlet is a weird-smelling Chinese shop in the back streets. I don’t think this one is a front – it largely caters to the HK immigrants, of whom we have a huge number. We also have weird artisanal cake shops – and also ‘dessert bars’. My take is that he former are set up by hopelessly optimistic amateur bakers looking to monetise their (impressive, but uncommercial) hobby; the latter are set up by hopelessly optimistic Muslims in the expectation that a business model which works in teetotal countries will transfer to the UK. Neither tend to last long.
My main objection to the vape shops, American candy stores, and Turkish barbers is that they are so ugly. If I was operating a front organisation, I wouldn’t plaster it in flashing lights and bright pinks.
Yes exactly. I find them much easier to tolerate if they make a tiny bit of effort to be attractive. The bubble tea outlets and dessert bars (we have them as well) generally do, the hideous candy stores and vape shops, never
Fuck me, the level of analysis this morning is poor. The employment rate in the UK is nearly the highest it's ever been, is very high in international comparison, and most of those not in the labour supply are minted early retirees and students. The extreme level of whining about workshy claimants is wildly out of proportion to their impact on the public finances.
I'm not even going to touch the bollocks around CGT. My only observation is a country set up to retain the rich entrenches inequality and is ultimately unsustainable. There will be a crunch sooner or later, as you run out of middle income people to tax and end up with an untouchable highly mobile elite and an underclass of people in poverty who cannot contribute any tax.
The employment rate is well below the pre-COVID rate.
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
If people want to work they find a way to get in to work, the bigger problem is that people don't want to work - and once someone isn't working, or not working much, it becomes habitual and their kids grow up in a home not seeing their parents working regularly so why should they when they grow up either?
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
The effective marginal tax rate won't be that high, means tested benefits and PIP are not taxable. So you have the tax free allowance to play with, and the NI equivalent. And if you have kids or are deemed to have Limited Capability for Work you can earn £400 before the taper kicks in, more if you are not claiming housing costs
The effective marginal tax rate is that high.
If you are earning above the threshold from a part time job, which is not many hours even on minimum wage, then you face both taxes and taper simultaneously which makes the effective marginal tax rate literally that high.
Without even considering the fact that going to work costs money as well as time and effort. People need to pay for transport, and quite possibly childcare etc. So if you feel you're not taking any more money home by working, and it's hard, and it's going to costs you, then people being rational beings decide not to bother.
The system is broken.
Problem is I don’t think the system is fixable and I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about it.
The sane fix would be to reduce the percentage of the taper but that drags more people into it so would significantly increase costs.
The feeling of being in a country with a median age of 25 (Kyrgyzstan) is quite remarkable (and the capital Bishkek is probably lower than even that). It affects every single moment of the waking day
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
I think this is absolutely right. There is an optimism and dynamism that comes with having a younger population - I have three children aged 12-18 and I love their energy and the sense of the world opening up for them. But at the same time there is no iron rule that says we have to become grumpy and insular as we get older. Especially as our society ages, I think it behoves us all to try to stay young in our attitudes - keep learning, keep engaging, keep taking risks.
A rare moment of total agreement. This is one reason I travel so much. I love travel of course - and I’m very lucky to do it for free half the time and get paid as well - but it is a chore also. The early rising (5am tomorrow ugh). The airports. The faff. The sheer physical stress of lugging luggage, perpetually
But I am pretty sure it keeps me younger. Going to a new country is like a workout for the brain and the mind. The exertion is like doing weights, dealing with a new language and new situations is like doing exams
Plus it keeps you curious about the world - incuriosity is terribly ageing. Complacency. I know what I like. Etc
I am typing this in the main square of Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, which is to the point
And on that note I am off to buy a souvenir. I’m not sure if Kyrgyzstan does souvenirs. All the guidebooks say is “buy a felt hat”. lol. When I am ever going to wear a felt hat?
Fuck me, the level of analysis this morning is poor. The employment rate in the UK is nearly the highest it's ever been, is very high in international comparison, and most of those not in the labour supply are minted early retirees and students. The extreme level of whining about workshy claimants is wildly out of proportion to their impact on the public finances.
I'm not even going to touch the bollocks around CGT. My only observation is a country set up to retain the rich entrenches inequality and is ultimately unsustainable. There will be a crunch sooner or later, as you run out of middle income people to tax and end up with an untouchable highly mobile elite and an underclass of people in poverty who cannot contribute any tax.
The employment rate is well below the pre-COVID rate.
A catastrophic fall from 76.5 to 75.1. it was about 70% in 2011, for a reference point.
Average I think close to 55 or 60. Where the money in our society is concentrated.
I've been flipping 911s for well over 10 years. In that time, In that time, I've done 56 (according to my spreadsheet and not including part-outs) and the average age of my buyers has gone from 40s to 60s. They are the ones with the money.
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.
Fuck me, the level of analysis this morning is poor. The employment rate in the UK is nearly the highest it's ever been, is very high in international comparison, and most of those not in the labour supply are minted early retirees and students. The extreme level of whining about workshy claimants is wildly out of proportion to their impact on the public finances.
I'm not even going to touch the bollocks around CGT. My only observation is a country set up to retain the rich entrenches inequality and is ultimately unsustainable. There will be a crunch sooner or later, as you run out of middle income people to tax and end up with an untouchable highly mobile elite and an underclass of people in poverty who cannot contribute any tax.
The employment rate is well below the pre-COVID rate.
A catastrophic fall from 76.5 to 75.1. it was about 70% in 2011, for a reference point.
Let me guess, your figures exclude economically inactive?
On topic, April bill rises have kicked in, as have higher price/tax/wage costs/tarrifs all round but with no commensurate increase in real-terms pay. People (rightly) see more of the same coming down the line and no real plan to tackle it. And they're not sure it can be.
So, the squeeze of the last three years is continuing. They are not exactly full of the joys of May, and rightly so.
Tariffs is the odd one out there. They don’t contribute to UK cost of living. In fact they have probably had a deflationary effect so far, both through dumping and the oil price. It’s the American consumer they screw, not us.
The damage from Trump’s shenanigans has been the market turmoil, including the rise in UK gilt yields which badly need to uncouple from the US.
Real terms pay is doing OK at the moment. The fundamentals for the worker aren’t bad, certainly much better than in 2022/3 at the height of the Ukraine inflation spike, but they’re still shit for government finances.
Imagine heading into this with a government that decided to cut borrowing rather than add to it, gilts would have uncoupled from treasuries very early on. Instead the call centre manager decided to add £60bn per year for public sector pay rises and lower growth and markets are pricing in much higher gilt supply. Absolutely self inflicted. The government should have cut spending by £30-40bn per year and reduced borrowing to build up much more fiscal headroom. Cutting headcount is still the only way to do it, eventually the government is going to have to do it, but the closer we get to an election the more resentment there will be among the people who are let go and their families. Such a completely stupid decision not to do it on day one.
"Cutting headcount" would not save "£30-40bn per year". What would you actually cut to save that amount ?
I'm not saying it's impossible - look for example at the Greek retrenchment - but you need to be honest about the process.
Public sector headcount, benefits, state and public sector pensions. All three need to be cut.
I don't disagree that reform is needed - I think we need to remake the state at a wholesale level. What I would challenge is the detail of how you think we should do it:
Public Sector Headcount - many layers of management could be cut and I'm sure there will be a few agencies we could merge / remove without issue. But in there we have stuff like the Passport Office, DVLA etc - and service from these is already dire. If you cut heads without reform you'll find the service collapses and that makes for unhappy voters.
Benefits - we already pay poverty-level numbers for practically everything. Compare our unemployment pay, our maternity pay, our sick pay - we get so little compared to our neighbours. If you cut these further you cut cash which directly recirculates through the local economy which means less businesses and less jobs. And we pay a ludicrous amount of in-work support to people where their wages are insufficient to pay their bills. I'm happy to plan to abolish these subsidies to big business but you can't just cut them without a dire effect on the economy
Pensions? I take the point. Gold plated seems like an understatement for many of them. At the same time our state pension is very low compared to competitor economies close-by. I would look to rebalance as much as cut.
My challenge on all of this is that you can't cut provision and assume the demand goes away. Its not a zero sum game where you cut one side of the equation with zero cost added to the other side. Make a lot of people much poorer and you tank the economy - which creates many other problems.
Which is why wholesale reform is needed. Cutting our way to growth has been tried and it always fails. The system we have doesn't work, so we need to change the system.
While you say benefits are very low - and for say a single healthy person out of a job they are - they are also cumulative, so if you can persuade the state you are ill, and/or disabled, and/or have a family, there are plenty of people getting benefits they would have to earn £30k+ a year to match, and who find themselves so comfortably off they can't be arsed to work. Similarly with pensions, where as you point out the state pension is comparatively small and many pensioners have to depend on benefits to pay the rent, or have small personal pensions and would suffer if you tunkered with say NI
Sure - the welfare state has completely lost sight of its purpose - a generous safety net when needed. Its no longer generous, and it captures people.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
Or revive the high street so it is not just mainly warehouse and delivery work on offer. Even Trump to be fair to him is trying to revive mass manufacturing work with his tariffs and build more factories in the US, even if his tariffs use a sledgehammer to crack a nut
How do you "revive the high street" when more and more people prefer to shop online? More and more the high street is made up of "service" business and alleged fronts for money laundering and illegal immigration such as nail bars and barbers. (And a new one - corner shops - which in one way is welcome but we have had three open in one one-mile stretch of high street, where there are 2 supermarkets, in recent months)
Add to that: bubble tea outlets, and weird artisanal cake shops
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Two of my daughters are mad for bubble tea. Chosen outlet is a weird-smelling Chinese shop in the back streets. I don’t think this one is a front – it largely caters to the HK immigrants, of whom we have a huge number. We also have weird artisanal cake shops – and also ‘dessert bars’. My take is that he former are set up by hopelessly optimistic amateur bakers looking to monetise their (impressive, but uncommercial) hobby; the latter are set up by hopelessly optimistic Muslims in the expectation that a business model which works in teetotal countries will transfer to the UK. Neither tend to last long.
My main objection to the vape shops, American candy stores, and Turkish barbers is that they are so ugly. If I was operating a front organisation, I wouldn’t plaster it in flashing lights and bright pinks.
Yes exactly. I find them much easier to tolerate if they make a tiny bit of effort to be attractive. The bubble tea outlets and dessert bars (we have them as well) generally do, the hideous candy stores and vape shops, never
Sorry, but what is a 'dessert bar'?
They sell pudding. Never craved a black forest gateaux at 9.30 on a Thursday night?
Comments
1) There are questions.
2) Asking and answering such questions is a fundamental part of the justice system
3) There have been many miscarriages of justice in the past.
4) Anyone who tries the "But it will damage the system" argument for not asking questions is an idiot.
Again you’re such a fuckwit you don’t understand that people move BEFORE tax rises, if they think those are coming down the line. That’s how really rich people stay rich
From the Telegraph:
“One of the consequences of tax revenue becoming more reliant on a smaller number of people is that it does make the public finances more vulnerable to the behaviour of that small number of people,” says Stuart Adam of the IFS
“If you did see a large exodus, that would have an outside impact on the public finances. That is a reason to worry,” he adds…..
“Once you have changes to the non-dom regime, inheritance tax, CAPITAL GAINS TAX and VAT on private schools ... lots of these things affect overlapping groups of people.”
We had a pretty good cocktail in the UK, attractive enough to entice the mobile wealthy. One by one we have removed all the nice ingredients - and now we are left with a big city with high taxes and bad weather where you can’t wear a flashy watch because someone will attack you with a machete
only from the bits that haven’t been automated - because even complex things like emergency replacement passports are now simple if your details are in the system - eek twin a got an emergency travel document in 2 days and the delay was delivery time to our embassy in Basil
Equally DVLA has made the standard tasks simple, it’s when human beings and decisions are needed where things fall apart
I’m annoyed that he seems to have plagiarised some of my own ideas, but you know the feeling right?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/26/labour-chancellor-budget-tax-non-doms/
Wealthy people might be leaving due to CGT or IHT or whatever, but this is not the proof whatsoever.
He has dug a hole and is still digging because he can't accept he is wrong or is too stupid to realise it.
National Trust annual membership for seniors (age 60 or over) is £72 for individual membership and £120.60 for joint membership. If you've been a member for at least the last three consecutive years, you can also apply for a 25% discount, bringing the price down to £72 for individual senior membership and £120.60 for joint senior membership.
To get concrete on the ground faster, we need concrete reform. Platitudes won't cut it.
This is something they should have been prepared for with a reform bill drafted ready to put before Parliament upon winning, instead a year has already passed and I just see crickets.
It was apparently the WFA changes that were going to kill millions of pensioners but it all seems to have gone out with a whimper. Just as the private school fee changes were apparently going to destroy the school system.
What is true is that whatever Labour's failings are (and there are many), there are a great number of people here and elsewhere who want them to fail and will oppose anything they do.
Here's my basic problem. The small numbers who "can't be arsed to work" get weaponised to beat into submission the genuinely sick / poor / uninformed.
Welfare is a better option than work because work doesn't pay the bills. I keep referring back to Iain Duncan Smith's reforming zeal. He was up in the valleys (I think Merthyr Tydfil) talking to people who were out of work, pointing at all the jobs and prosperity in Cardiff.
Yes, but these are shift jobs. Where public transport stops too early, and is too expensive when it does run, and we have kids.
This is the issue. "Just cut the benefit" (and I despise that word) isn't the solution. Make work viable is the solution, but the right have zero interest in doing so and the left have zero interest in reforming the welfare state.
After sleeping on it for a night I think the point where the settler godmother Weiss shoves Theroux hard in the chest is pivotal, representing so much of what's happening in Israel (which includes Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon according to some of the ultras). She said at the end 'I wish you'd pushed me back', an unlikely event which would have no doubt inspired disproportionate retribution. Sound familiar?
And the evidence given by other staff in court is different to what they described in emails etc a lot closed in time to the events.
I think at the very least she deserves another go in court. Hopefully with some better advisers.
This implies that these assets may be taxed both by the overseas tax authorities where they are lodged and by HMRC. Are there double taxation rules for this?
How do you break through? Change the narrative. They are attracted to MAGA and Reform and AfD and RN because these are the only parties who actually listen to them. Who even try to find solutions to their problems.
Progressive parties can't just attack these voters like Gordon Brown or Hillary Clinton. They have to accept that their lived reality IS reality (so stop sending Wes Streeting on the telly to patronise them) and find alternative solutions.
And if someone does the right thing and tries to come off benefits by working more, then the state takes away their benefits with an effective marginal tax rate of 80-100% . . . so why bother working?
Eliminate the UC taper, merge UC, NI and Income Tax into a single tax and benefit band, and ensure anyone who goes to work is better off than those who don't. Then we'll have people who want to work and find a way to do so.
There is no doubt about it that MAGA is a cult but it wasn't the cult that re-elected Trump it was the people in the middle who could have gone either way.
People really over-think this, if the economy is in a bad shape when Trump finishes up in the White House the Republicans will get destroyed.
Hence if Kemi loses the next general election and assuming Farage hasn't won most seats with Kemi then DPM, the Conservatives likely move even further right under Jenrick to try and win back voters lost to Reform
I don't know but as a 3rd party who would I believe. I know, those who have knowledge of the subject and not a travel journalist.
It's only people selling paintings and jewellery and investments and the like that get more than a year to pay it.
Both Labour and Tories have done this. The Tories left the finances in pretty good shape in 1997, but the services were a mess. Labour banged on about the Tories for the next 13 years. Labour left a huge financial black hole in 2010, but the services were not in bad shape and the Tories banged on about the disastrous state of the economy for the next 14 years.
And now Labour is doing the same - e.g. the 20 billion black hole...
But when I was working, we were in a period of 10% inflation. I would have expected a stream of people in the Jobcentre needing to earn a few hundred pounds extra a month to pay the bills. Did I f***. Nada. Zilch.
While you can argue about the marginal rate, you are always better off if you work and are on UC. Just find a part time job you can walk to. (And yes some people can, it depends where you live)
We have also moved on from benefits supporting sick and disabled people too work part time, if that is all they are able to, to thinking they are owed a living.
https://x.com/AntiToxicPeople/status/1916658181184589870
As you look up there are young people (very often beautiful young women but I’ll stop perving to make this point). Around the corner: more young people. Across the road, loads of young people. Young people laugh a lot. They chatter excitedly. They
gather in parks and coffee shops and talk optimistically about the future
And then there are kids. Billions of kids. Schools overflowing. Anyone over 30 has about nine kids
They are also apparently free and the sexes are decidedly equal
It has a downside. An old git like me can feel like Gandalf in the shire. The screaming babies irritate
But overall it’s a wonderful feeling - of hope and youth and beauty and ambition and drive and good spirits
I wonder how much of the malaise of the west is simply down to the fact we’re getting old. When did Britain last have a median age of 25?
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov:
• Russia will not negotiate over its territory; Crimea is non-negotiable.
• Ceasefire must include guarantees preventing Ukraine from rebuilding its military; arms supplies must end.
• Control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant will not change; it is already secured.
• No U.S. proposals have been made to lift sanctions.
• Moscow is ready to seek a balance of interests in negotiations on Ukraine.
https://x.com/PolymarketIntel/status/1916771083090370597
There are three models of headcount reduction I can think of. One is that there are people being employed who are essentially decorative or speculative, who can be erased with nobody noticing. If you were to tell me that that was the case in the more glamorous bits of law and finance, I wouldn't be shocked. It's not my world, so I don't know, but I wouldn't be shocked. I don't think it is the case in the public sector, and if it is then shame on Cameron, Osborne, Sunak and the rest of them.
Another is that there are people doing jobs that shouldn't be being done- the Golgafrincham B Ark types. Douglas Adams neatly skewered them and their critics- yes they are ghastly and absurd, but no they're not pointless. Every annoying regulation is there for a reason, even Ofsted, and you need to be damn sure what that reason was before ripping it out.
The third is what we tend to get. Most public sector workers are doing stuff that the public wants done. You can sometimes get more work from fewer people by better equipment and training, but not always and it costs upfront. So at some level, we get creeping enshiffication. As we have seen.
I suggest we move on
Thatcher, Abbott and nearly Corbyn also won or near won in parliamentary democracies from opposition on non centrist platforms
The passport office was dire a few years ago & at some point the Home Office put somebody competent in charge & got a grip on the situation.
I think bureaucracies can fail in two ways - one is by not having enough capacity to meet the demand for the administrative work Parliament has given them to carry out. Sometimes that is down to a mulish workforce, but more often it’s just bad management of the existing workforce, or a simple lack of capacity due to lack of funding which the bureaucracy itself can’t fix.
The second is when circumstances change (as in the driving test situation) and the bureaucracy is simply unable to conceptualise the necessary changes to their approach to the world that would enable them to remain effective. An outside context problem for a bureaucracy leaves them thrashing away filling in the same forms days after day to no effect whatsoever on reality, no matter how hard they work the workforce.
Fixing the latter requires leadership that understands the necessity of change & politicians likewise. Career wise it’s much safer to do nothing & point to how effective you are at pushing the paper around when asked why nothing works unfortunately.
We have a huge problem with housing and it knocks on to other areas. If young people can't afford a house they probably aren't going out spending money elsewhere either. I think the Tories almost had the right idea with the bedroom tax. Time to tax the fuckers living in huge houses bought cheap 40 years ago and with five spare bedrooms. Give the money to the kids who can't buy houses.
You’d have to show that a. property CGT accounted for the drop in take (that would be an extremely unlikely scenario), b. that was driven by prices falling rather than volumes dropping, c. those prices falling were driven by ultra rich people selling up and leaving, but somehow not triggering CGT on the property sale because despite them being ultra rich, it was their PPR.
Much more plausible - the old Occam’s razor - is that disposal volume or value was down in 2023/4 largely due to macroeconomic conditions driven by higher interest rates.
Society needs to be completely rebalanced in favour of the young - and British born young - not endless more young migrants who arrived yesterday
Part of this is doing what you say
PS not a slight on @Fishing whose post was spot on and added to the discussion.
So renewals became nearly completely automated.
Take 1. The UC system is much better than anything we have had before. But work coaches spend hours of their lives tinkering with it. It can be automated as a few things have been done, successfully. However not enough resource is put into doing so. Double it. At least. Take the resource from the "front line" if necessary, it will pay off.
Take 2. DWP has a deal with the treasury that it is funded to cover x amount if talking to customers. This obviously does not incentivise efficiency as it tends to encourage bums on seats. The DWP should not be paid to talk to people, it should be paid to get them into work. However that won't happen, partly because of the idiocy of the Treasury, partly because the DWP mandarins won't want their bonuses to actually depend on performance, ie getting people into work
When did the UK last have a median age of 25, like Kyrgyzstan today?
Answer:
“The UK last had a median age of around 25 years approximately during the early 1960s. Specifically, census and demographic records indicate the median age in the UK was about 25 in the early to mid-1960s (circa 1963–1965)”
Between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. QED
The term UBI has been embraced by the left so many on the right react instinctively against it. But there are solid right wing arguments in its favour, as argued by Friedman and others.
The Laffer Curve applies too when people are facing upto 100% real marginal tax rates.
One thing, related quite closely to the problem of our ageing population, is the fact we have shifted the money in the economy from income to wealth. Incomes have been largely flat, but wealth has increased and debt reduced in almost all of the population. Whether tax can redress that I don’t know. It’s much harder to tax financial prudence than it is to tax spendthrifts.
your point against someone else, and failing, this ain’t really true, is it?
No of course not. You can't read or understand more than one sentence at a time.
Again sit down, get your brain up to speed. Read it slowly and try and take in the detail.
If you are earning above the threshold from a part time job, which is not many hours even on minimum wage, then you face both taxes and taper simultaneously which makes the effective marginal tax rate literally that high.
Without even considering the fact that going to work costs money as well as time and effort. People need to pay for transport, and quite possibly childcare etc. So if you feel you're not taking any more money home by working, and it's hard, and it's going to costs you, then people being rational beings decide not to bother.
The system is broken.
Public sector productivity is worse than ever and we have more people working for the state than ever. The two are intrinsically linked, we need to think about what the state does and stop doing some (a lot) of it. Again I'll go back to the box tickers, we keep thinking about it from the perspective of who ticks this particular box rather than does the box even need to exist. We're now in the position where there's so many people working for the state that they just create their own micro bureaucracy to justify their own jobs and then hire themselves underlings to do it while they think of ever more methods to justify their salary and pension.
It's time to swing a gigantic axe to the whole lot of it. There's a lot of people doing busy work in the public sector just looking to pick up a salary and pension, they probably work hard but what they do makes precisely zero difference to users of public services and in a lot of cases it will be negative because those people create additional hoops for service users to jump through to justify their salaries.
On pensions, a 40% haircut to DB public sector pensions, rebalance the mental DC pensions away from contributions to salary, means test the state pension so that anyone in the higher rate tax bracket has it tapered away from £50k to £70k and people with more than £70k in retirement income don't get it at all. Use a portion of those savings to increase the state pension value by 20% where the extra money will be literally life changing for people who survive on very little.
I think the miscreants have realised Turkish barbers, vape shops and American candy stores have been rumbled
Perhaps behind the Leninism of Steve Bannon and Michael Gove and the "smash it all up and build the new regime starting from the car park" of Dominic Cummings...the real inspirer is Mao?
When the "single AI answer" was introduced recently with a fancy presentation at the top of the offerings supplied by Google's websearch engine, I straightaway thought of this:
AI has answered! Bow down before it! AI brings light!
https://database.earth/population/united-kingdom/median-age
My guess is you'd probably have to go back to the late nineteenth century, to get a median age of 25.
Round the corner from me, a chap sold up his barber shop, for a ridiculous amount and retired. Redone in a bizarre gilt & black style. Still the usual handful of customers - but not enough to pay for the huge price.
He was from Cyprus, so the business has a nice long history with the banks of sending money abroad.....
Also interesting that, in that case, it coincides with Empire. Thats when you export people
I suspect @leon has never even encountered CGT in real life or has any knowledge of tax whatsoever or any economic background.
Yesterday was another example. On regular occasions he posts about us all being a simulation. He is 60 odd year old man. How many of us didn't have those feelings when we were 10 years old? It is a bit pathetic.
I think even at that tender age I'd have realised Nick Bostrom was a piss-taker.
I'm not even going to touch the bollocks around CGT. My only observation is a country set up to retain the rich entrenches inequality and is ultimately unsustainable. There will be a crunch sooner or later, as you run out of middle income people to tax and end up with an untouchable highly mobile elite and an underclass of people in poverty who cannot contribute any tax.
We also have weird artisanal cake shops – and also ‘dessert bars’. My take is that he former are set up by hopelessly optimistic amateur bakers looking to monetise their (impressive, but uncommercial) hobby; the latter are set up by hopelessly optimistic Muslims in the expectation that a business model which works in teetotal countries will transfer to the UK. Neither tend to last long.
My main objection to the vape shops, American candy stores, and Turkish barbers is that they are so ugly. If I was operating a front organisation, I wouldn’t plaster it in flashing lights and bright pinks.
I'm not saying your explanation is invalid - both could be true, thanks to the appalling economic incompetence we've had to put up with in this country for the last quarter century.
I wonder if councils and cops make the same calculation. “They’re probably fake but it’s better than the alternative”
He is also correct that I am an amateur vigneron. And very nervous as we enter the perfect storm of a hot week encouraging all the leaves out, followed by a cold plunge and very likely some frost.
And with that it’s time for me to board the plan to Chicago where it’s going to be 15C and wet.
Harvard Surgeon: We Are In A Global Health Crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huVdKhZLfm8
The existence of their customers is the one fly in the ointment.
From the prospect of the government (local and national), it's getting to tax (and socialise) the proceeds of crime. What's not to like?
EDIT: For many years, illegal building work has been ignored. Im taking about sites where you can see from the road enough to get them shut down. The inspectors only inspect the legit sites.
You could lose a million young men in war, but the population would just bounce back.
Tbh, if Labour did threaten a future change in CGT on residential property, it would probably crash house prices and I would certainly consider selling my BtL flat to my tenant (a friend) to avoid the increased bill, if they have a deposit ready. Shit for me, brilliant news for renters.
The sane fix would be to reduce the percentage of the taper but that drags more people into it so would significantly increase costs.
But I am pretty sure it keeps me younger. Going to a new country is like a workout for the brain and the mind. The exertion is like doing weights, dealing with a new language and new situations is like doing exams
Plus it keeps you curious about the world - incuriosity is terribly ageing. Complacency. I know what I like. Etc
I am typing this in the main square of Bishkek Kyrgyzstan, which is to the point
And on that note I am off to buy a souvenir. I’m not sure if Kyrgyzstan does souvenirs. All the guidebooks say is “buy a felt hat”. lol. When I am ever going to wear a felt hat?
Later!
https://x.com/SkyNews/status/1916786958405132290
I particularly like selling these types GT3s. They like the idea but are wholly unprepared for the white knuckle driving experience and extreme discomfort. I am occasionally able to buy them back in a few months at a steep discount.