This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
That's not going to happen while we see the backlash from the cut to WFP and the ending of the landowners IHT exemption. This government inherited both a terrible financial situation and threadbare public services.
That said, the misery is overdone. I have been to both Cheshire and York for family events these last weekends, and both were heaving with folk out spending money.
In contrast i am in Aberdeen. Union Street was once up there with Princes Street in Edinburgh and Buchanan Street in Glasgow as a shopping and entertainment hub. Now it’s a combination of the boarded up and charity shops as well as filthy. It’s really sad to see it.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
Remember, the police will only declare a terrorism incident when they are sure it fits the definition and Merseyside police won't right now even if they have any suspicion. Too many connotations and, most likely, too uncertain right now.
Only when they are sure they can pin ideological, religious or political motive would they do it. That may take a few days or more to grasp if they have any suspicions. The problem arises if lets say they did find such motive then dont bother telling the public in due course.
As it is, we don't know and they probably are not 100% sure right now until they look about a bit. If there isnt, they should confirm that pretty quickly and get it over with.
As it is, there is every chance the person involved is known to the police in some form. Its very possible to have some kind of history to be doing that kind of thing, even if the story comes out that the prepetrator was coked or methed up the eyeballs as a contributory cause or something like that.
Just on the thread, Tim Montgomerie is reportedly of the view that Boris is actively looking a route back, if that counts for anything.
It goes without saying that Johnson wants to return. The question for him is "how?".
The questions for the Tory Party are "why?" & whither?"
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
That's not going to happen while we see the backlash from the cut to WFP and the ending of the landowners IHT exemption. This government inherited both a terrible financial situation and threadbare public services.
That said, the misery is overdone. I have been to both Cheshire and York for family events these last weekends, and both were heaving with folk out spending money.
In contrast i am in Aberdeen. Union Street was once up there with Princes Street in Edinburgh and Buchanan Street in Glasgow as a shopping and entertainment hub. Now it’s a combination of the boarded up and charity shops as well as filthy. It’s really sad to see it.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The movement of M&S to Union Square from Union Street is undoubtedly both a cause and effect to the current mess dragging a lot of footfall away making it even harder for the remaining stores to survive. Another triumph for our planners who seem to think that demand for retail is almost infinitely elastic.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The new traffic schemes with the 'bus gates' doesn't help
The Telegraph's chart showing the scale of debt in the G7 has five countries with more debt than His Majesty's United Kingdom and only Germany with less (admittedly a lot less).
I'm not really sure what the point of the article is, other than to fill space.
Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility suggests that based on policy settings as of March 2024, public spending in the UK over the next 50 years would rise from 45pc to 60pc of GDP, but that tax revenues would remain static at 40pc.
As a result, public debt would rise rapidly from the late 2030s onwards to 274pc of GDP by 2075.
Fifty years is a long time in politics.
"The Telegraph is an increasingly terrible newspaper-shaped object, part n in a series on N."
(See also the bluesky thread viewcode linked to. If you have the resources to dress propaganda up as news, then propaganda beats reality. And that's a blooming hard problem to fix.)
Funnily enough my wife was lamenting that some offer or other meant she was reading a lot more from the Telegraph and she thought that this was contributing to her low mood. Its contribution is indeed depressing. I have tried to explain that the Telegraph thinks that it is its duty to decry a Labour government, even if the vast majority of the problems were inherited from the Tories. The thread @viewcode linked to does indeed show how this works.
But Jeremy Warner is a serious person and he is right about the desperate state of our finances.
Yes he is and it is sad to see otherwise smart people dismissing what he says simply because it’s the Telegraph.
Yes, there's a problem of a gap between public expectations and what governments can deliver. In the UK, decades of selling family silver to find ongoing lifestyle costs makes that worse. On top of that, even those who recognise the problem are still at the "inflict the pain on someone else" stage. (For example,saying "just tax the rich", or expecting people working in the public sector to carry on working in those jobs without pay rises.)
But if a description of the problem depends on rolling current policy fifty years ahead, it's not an entirely sensible argument.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The new traffic schemes with the 'bus gates' doesn't help
It's a P&J panic story. The terminal decline of Union Street long pre-dates the annoying bus gate. There are very few people saying "I would go and shop on Union Street but now I have drive that way instead of this way to get to the car park so I won't bother"
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The new traffic schemes with the 'bus gates' doesn't help
It's a P&J panic story. The terminal decline of Union Street long pre-dates the annoying bus gate. There are very few people saying "I would go and shop on Union Street but now I have drive that way instead of this way to get to the car park so I won't bother"
I went to Aberdeen to visit friends last year. I had a nightmare time trying to reach the hotel car park. It definitely put me off going back
The Telegraph's chart showing the scale of debt in the G7 has five countries with more debt than His Majesty's United Kingdom and only Germany with less (admittedly a lot less).
I'm not really sure what the point of the article is, other than to fill space.
Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility suggests that based on policy settings as of March 2024, public spending in the UK over the next 50 years would rise from 45pc to 60pc of GDP, but that tax revenues would remain static at 40pc.
As a result, public debt would rise rapidly from the late 2030s onwards to 274pc of GDP by 2075.
Fifty years is a long time in politics.
"The Telegraph is an increasingly terrible newspaper-shaped object, part n in a series on N."
(See also the bluesky thread viewcode linked to. If you have the resources to dress propaganda up as news, then propaganda beats reality. And that's a blooming hard problem to fix.)
Funnily enough my wife was lamenting that some offer or other meant she was reading a lot more from the Telegraph and she thought that this was contributing to her low mood. Its contribution is indeed depressing. I have tried to explain that the Telegraph thinks that it is its duty to decry a Labour government, even if the vast majority of the problems were inherited from the Tories. The thread @viewcode linked to does indeed show how this works.
But Jeremy Warner is a serious person and he is right about the desperate state of our finances.
Yes he is and it is sad to see otherwise smart people dismissing what he says simply because it’s the Telegraph.
Yes, there's a problem of a gap between public expectations and what governments can deliver. In the UK, decades of selling family silver to find ongoing lifestyle costs makes that worse. On top of that, even those who recognise the problem are still at the "inflict the pain on someone else" stage. (For example,saying "just tax the rich", or expecting people working in the public sector to carry on working in those jobs without pay rises.)
But if a description of the problem depends on rolling current policy fifty years ahead, it's not an entirely sensible argument.
Well that happens a lot. People do the same on state pensions for example and it is used to justify policy changes as happens with the change to 67 from 66. I think it merely just an extrapolation and warning to us if we do nothing.
The problem is there will be pain, I’m afraid, and this time we all have to all be in it together.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The new traffic schemes with the 'bus gates' doesn't help
It's a P&J panic story. The terminal decline of Union Street long pre-dates the annoying bus gate. There are very few people saying "I would go and shop on Union Street but now I have drive that way instead of this way to get to the car park so I won't bother"
The shopping streets in Scotland that are doing well are not those you can drive a car along. That custom collapsed with the advent of home delivery and out-of-town retail parks, and councils are only catching up now.
Even Princes Street is currently undergoing a belated transition to mixed use (restaurants and hotels etc). The excellent St James' Centre has finally killed it off as a primary retail location.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
I think we have a very unhealthy attitude to work in this country, which is also very discouraging to those who want to find their way back into the employment system.
Work hours have in many sectors become more flexible but therefore longer as a result, and less social.
Remember, the police will only declare a terrorism incident when they are sure it fits the definition and Merseyside police won't right now even if they have any suspicion. Too many connotations and, most likely, too uncertain right now.
Only when they are sure they can pin ideological, religious or political motive would they do it. That may take a few days or more to grasp if they have any suspicions. The problem arises if lets say they did find such motive then dont bother telling the public in due course.
As it is, we don't know and they probably are not 100% sure right now until they look about a bit. If there isnt, they should confirm that pretty quickly and get it over with.
As it is, there is every chance the person involved is known to the police in some form. Its very possible to have some kind of history to be doing that kind of thing, even if the story comes out that the prepetrator was coked or methed up the eyeballs as a contributory cause or something like that.
Just on the thread, Tim Montgomerie is reportedly of the view that Boris is actively looking a route back, if that counts for anything.
It goes without saying that Johnson wants to return. The question for him is "how?".
The questions for the Tory Party are "why?" & whither?"
As Boris is the only Conservative who polls show would see the Conservatives ahead of Reform and Labour again. He reaches centrist swing and redwall voters other Tories can't
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
And yet here we are looking at claimant count and saying "time to do something about it". About what? If people are too sick to work, then what can we do? If they're not, then its a lifestyle choice and we need "the political will" to boot them off - that's how it read at least.
Multiple factors: 1. We have largely scrapped the social security protections people had. Work is an impractical unaffordable dream for too many disabled people. 2. Employment is an expensive luxury that businesses struggle to afford. Volunteering to take on additional costs - however brilliant the disabled person is - isn't something businesses are queueing up to do 3. So many people on survival mode. Due to a variety of factors - usually stacked on top of each other - they've found themselves in this trap
There is a solution - completely rethink social security and the tax. At its core has to be UBI but that as you say is a political will question...
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
I think we have a very unhealthy attitude to work in this country, which is also very discouraging to those who want to find their way back into the employment system.
Work hours have in many sectors become more flexible but therefore longer as a result, and less social.
Also the way the benefits system is structured with its cliff edges. It’s something Bart talks about a fair bit and he’s quite right.
Sky News being a bit naughty this morning. They’ve shown one video of what happened before, but they’ve not shown the immediate seconds before the driver drove into the crowd. Either show it all, or show nothing.
It is hardly unprecedented for mainstream news channels not to show people being killed or grievously injured.
You misunderstand. They are showing that bit (or at least, the bit just before). What they’re not showing is before that the car was surrounded by a baying mob. They have shown the guy kicking the cars rear windscreen wiper off to suggest that an altercation has occurred. They just haven’t shown what it escalated to.
And why was the car surrounded by a baying mob? It's difficult to make out exactly what happened, but my suspicion is the driver has circumvented the road closures either through drugs, alcohol or frustration and people have reacted to this given the recent history of vehicles and large groups of pedestrians.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
No government could win on that, Labour would lose its leftwing voters to the Greens with that much austerity, the Tories would lose their remaining vote mostly to Reform and the LDs with that high tax
Remember, the police will only declare a terrorism incident when they are sure it fits the definition and Merseyside police won't right now even if they have any suspicion. Too many connotations and, most likely, too uncertain right now.
Only when they are sure they can pin ideological, religious or political motive would they do it. That may take a few days or more to grasp if they have any suspicions. The problem arises if lets say they did find such motive then dont bother telling the public in due course.
As it is, we don't know and they probably are not 100% sure right now until they look about a bit. If there isnt, they should confirm that pretty quickly and get it over with.
As it is, there is every chance the person involved is known to the police in some form. Its very possible to have some kind of history to be doing that kind of thing, even if the story comes out that the prepetrator was coked or methed up the eyeballs as a contributory cause or something like that.
Just on the thread, Tim Montgomerie is reportedly of the view that Boris is actively looking a route back, if that counts for anything.
It goes without saying that Johnson wants to return. The question for him is "how?".
The questions for the Tory Party are "why?" & whither?"
As Boris is the only Conservative who polls show would see the Conservatives ahead of Reform and Labour again. He reaches centrist swing and redwall voters other Tories can't
He gets name recognition. That's all. You used to be a political strategist - please please go back to playing scenarios forward from "here is the poll today so here is what would happen years down the road".
Boris as leader would undoubtedly have a flurry of interest and an initial "Boris is back!" boost for the Tories. Then everyone remembers why he was hounded out of office and we're back to the same place where the flurry of ongoing interest is a negative not a positive.
The Telegraph's chart showing the scale of debt in the G7 has five countries with more debt than His Majesty's United Kingdom and only Germany with less (admittedly a lot less).
I'm not really sure what the point of the article is, other than to fill space.
Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility suggests that based on policy settings as of March 2024, public spending in the UK over the next 50 years would rise from 45pc to 60pc of GDP, but that tax revenues would remain static at 40pc.
As a result, public debt would rise rapidly from the late 2030s onwards to 274pc of GDP by 2075.
Fifty years is a long time in politics.
"The Telegraph is an increasingly terrible newspaper-shaped object, part n in a series on N."
(See also the bluesky thread viewcode linked to. If you have the resources to dress propaganda up as news, then propaganda beats reality. And that's a blooming hard problem to fix.)
Funnily enough my wife was lamenting that some offer or other meant she was reading a lot more from the Telegraph and she thought that this was contributing to her low mood. Its contribution is indeed depressing. I have tried to explain that the Telegraph thinks that it is its duty to decry a Labour government, even if the vast majority of the problems were inherited from the Tories. The thread @viewcode linked to does indeed show how this works.
But Jeremy Warner is a serious person and he is right about the desperate state of our finances.
Yes he is and it is sad to see otherwise smart people dismissing what he says simply because it’s the Telegraph.
Yes, there's a problem of a gap between public expectations and what governments can deliver. In the UK, decades of selling family silver to find ongoing lifestyle costs makes that worse. On top of that, even those who recognise the problem are still at the "inflict the pain on someone else" stage. (For example,saying "just tax the rich", or expecting people working in the public sector to carry on working in those jobs without pay rises.)
But if a description of the problem depends on rolling current policy fifty years ahead, it's not an entirely sensible argument.
Well that happens a lot. People do the same on state pensions for example and it is used to justify policy changes as happens with the change to 67 from 66. I think it merely just an extrapolation and warning to us if we do nothing.
The problem is there will be pain, I’m afraid, and this time we all have to all be in it together.
Hasn’t Denmark just moved its retirement age to 70?
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
I think we have a very unhealthy attitude to work in this country, which is also very discouraging to those who want to find their way back into the employment system.
Work hours have in many sectors become more flexible but therefore longer as a result, and less social.
Also the way the benefits system is structured with its cliff edges. It’s something Bart talks about a fair bit and he’s quite right.
Its absurd that we have built these cliff edges in. Have you seen the carers one? Inadvertently stray over the hard cap and lose the entire payment.
We cannot reform this system and its absurd that politicians continue to pretend that they can. We need to rethink it utterly.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
It’s not going to happen though. Nobody wants more austerity. Reform certainly aren’t going to do that.
Sky News being a bit naughty this morning. They’ve shown one video of what happened before, but they’ve not shown the immediate seconds before the driver drove into the crowd. Either show it all, or show nothing.
It is hardly unprecedented for mainstream news channels not to show people being killed or grievously injured.
You misunderstand. They are showing that bit (or at least, the bit just before). What they’re not showing is before that the car was surrounded by a baying mob. They have shown the guy kicking the cars rear windscreen wiper off to suggest that an altercation has occurred. They just haven’t shown what it escalated to.
And why was the car surrounded by a baying mob? It's difficult to make out exactly what happened, but my suspicion is the driver has circumvented the road closures either through drugs, alcohol or frustration and people have reacted to this given the recent history of vehicles and large groups of pedestrians.
Having marshalled a few road races, I can quite believe it started as a road rage incident when matey discovered he couldn't drive along the road he wanted to
Remember, the police will only declare a terrorism incident when they are sure it fits the definition and Merseyside police won't right now even if they have any suspicion. Too many connotations and, most likely, too uncertain right now.
Only when they are sure they can pin ideological, religious or political motive would they do it. That may take a few days or more to grasp if they have any suspicions. The problem arises if lets say they did find such motive then dont bother telling the public in due course.
As it is, we don't know and they probably are not 100% sure right now until they look about a bit. If there isnt, they should confirm that pretty quickly and get it over with.
As it is, there is every chance the person involved is known to the police in some form. Its very possible to have some kind of history to be doing that kind of thing, even if the story comes out that the prepetrator was coked or methed up the eyeballs as a contributory cause or something like that.
Just on the thread, Tim Montgomerie is reportedly of the view that Boris is actively looking a route back, if that counts for anything.
It goes without saying that Johnson wants to return. The question for him is "how?".
The questions for the Tory Party are "why?" & whither?"
As Boris is the only Conservative who polls show would see the Conservatives ahead of Reform and Labour again. He reaches centrist swing and redwall voters other Tories can't
"Has anyone here been to Peppa Pig World?" "Not enough!" "Forgive me, sorry, forgive me, sorry, forgive me..."
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
I think we have a very unhealthy attitude to work in this country, which is also very discouraging to those who want to find their way back into the employment system.
Work hours have in many sectors become more flexible but therefore longer as a result, and less social.
And, at the other end of the scale, people stepping away from work early because they don't particularly need the money and the work experience is too unpleasant. That's also costing the state in production that's not happening and taxes not coming in.
(I think about what I do, and the prospect of doing something like it for a couple more decades, and think 'f&#+ that'.)
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
I think we have a very unhealthy attitude to work in this country, which is also very discouraging to those who want to find their way back into the employment system.
Work hours have in many sectors become more flexible but therefore longer as a result, and less social.
Also the way the benefits system is structured with its cliff edges. It’s something Bart talks about a fair bit and he’s quite right.
Its absurd that we have built these cliff edges in. Have you seen the carers one? Inadvertently stray over the hard cap and lose the entire payment.
We cannot reform this system and its absurd that politicians continue to pretend that they can. We need to rethink it utterly.
That's because not every benefit has been rolled into UC. Whatever you think of UC generally, the taper and savings conditions work very well compared with the legacy system. You still get high effective tax rates, but the cliff edges are smoothed out.
I think most of PBs discussions on UC miss the sanctions regime and work conditionality though, and only focus on the headline financial calculation. There's not much carrot to work under UC, but plenty of stick. You cannot sit in your arse unless you've got very young children - the bigger challenge is that a lot of these people are basically unemployable, so they are constantly rotating through the system generating loads of admin.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The new traffic schemes with the 'bus gates' doesn't help
It's a P&J panic story. The terminal decline of Union Street long pre-dates the annoying bus gate. There are very few people saying "I would go and shop on Union Street but now I have drive that way instead of this way to get to the car park so I won't bother"
City and town centres never learn. The advent of out of town shopping malls or even the grouping them together inside the city has always moved the customers to them. I remember the building of the st Nicholas centre on George Street when I was a student there. Before then union street was bustling and you couldn't move for people all the way up the street. Now it's a ghost town up there.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
That's not going to happen while we see the backlash from the cut to WFP and the ending of the landowners IHT exemption. This government inherited both a terrible financial situation and threadbare public services.
That said, the misery is overdone. I have been to both Cheshire and York for family events these last weekends, and both were heaving with folk out spending money.
In contrast i am in Aberdeen. Union Street was once up there with Princes Street in Edinburgh and Buchanan Street in Glasgow as a shopping and entertainment hub. Now it’s a combination of the boarded up and charity shops as well as filthy. It’s really sad to see it.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
Are they still fcking up The Green? It had the makings of an organic wee Bohemian quarter a few years ago but then the dread word development popped up.
I read that it’s part of the grandiosely named CCBMP - the City Centre and Beach Masterplan.
F1: Undercutters Ep22, with a brief post-mortem of the woeful Monaco (yet still better than last year) and a happier look ahead to Spain. And then a less happy look ahead to next year when we say goodbye to Barcelona and hello to a highly dubious Madrid track that has a 10 year contract. Also, there are some splendid graphs in the transcript.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The new traffic schemes with the 'bus gates' doesn't help
It's a P&J panic story. The terminal decline of Union Street long pre-dates the annoying bus gate. There are very few people saying "I would go and shop on Union Street but now I have drive that way instead of this way to get to the car park so I won't bother"
City and town centres never learn. The advent of out of town shopping malls or even the grouping them together inside the city has always moved the customers to them. I remember the building of the st Nicholas centre on George Street when I was a student there. Before then union street was bustling and you couldn't move for people all the way up the street. Now it's a ghost town up there.
Also I have seen the death of many town centres due to this. Stafford, Maidenhead, Pembroke Dock. I feel it is only the build up of students that are keeping the rest alive.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
The pittance bit isn't always true. Benefits are cumulative, some people get quite a good living out of them, certainly if your sights are set reasonably low. Add up UC, the kids element (which is more than the adult basic allowance), your rent paid, the LCWRA element, PIP, DLA for kids, the carer element etc. If your circumstances are right that adds up to a lot. If you get enough PIP, Motability will pay for a new car which is more than a lot of people in good jobs can afford. Whereas if you are currently single, too ill to work, don't meet the threshold for PIP or LCWRA, then you are f***ed and benefits don't even do the job of providing a short-term safety net
Sky News being a bit naughty this morning. They’ve shown one video of what happened before, but they’ve not shown the immediate seconds before the driver drove into the crowd. Either show it all, or show nothing.
It is hardly unprecedented for mainstream news channels not to show people being killed or grievously injured.
You misunderstand. They are showing that bit (or at least, the bit just before). What they’re not showing is before that the car was surrounded by a baying mob. They have shown the guy kicking the cars rear windscreen wiper off to suggest that an altercation has occurred. They just haven’t shown what it escalated to.
And why was the car surrounded by a baying mob? It's difficult to make out exactly what happened, but my suspicion is the driver has circumvented the road closures either through drugs, alcohol or frustration and people have reacted to this given the recent history of vehicles and large groups of pedestrians.
I’m passing no judgment on the actions of anyone. I just think if the media are showing footage to paint a picture, do it properly.
There is much hand-wringing up here about the state of Union Street. All cities have seen decline due to the slow down in retail, but surely one of the big drivers for Aberdeen was the opening of Union Square...
The new traffic schemes with the 'bus gates' doesn't help
It's a P&J panic story. The terminal decline of Union Street long pre-dates the annoying bus gate. There are very few people saying "I would go and shop on Union Street but now I have drive that way instead of this way to get to the car park so I won't bother"
City and town centres never learn. The advent of out of town shopping malls or even the grouping them together inside the city has always moved the customers to them. I remember the building of the st Nicholas centre on George Street when I was a student there. Before then union street was bustling and you couldn't move for people all the way up the street. Now it's a ghost town up there.
Also I have seen the death of many town centres due to this. Stafford, Maidenhead, Pembroke Dock. I feel it is only the build up of students that are keeping the rest alive.
Luton’s town centre is hideous, although many parts outside the centre look a lot smarter than they did back in 2007, when I moved here.
Enfield’s town centre looks better than it did, because the main shopping centre is right in the middle of it. There are still plenty of bank branches, some good restaurants, a couple of department stores, and a Waterstones.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
No government could win on that, Labour would lose its leftwing voters to the Greens with that much austerity, the Tories would lose their remaining vote mostly to Reform and the LDs with that high tax
Thatcher did. But she had the drive, integrity and courage to take on vested interests, to justify her actions by the national interest and the foresight to see what the alternatives were.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
I think we have a very unhealthy attitude to work in this country, which is also very discouraging to those who want to find their way back into the employment system.
Work hours have in many sectors become more flexible but therefore longer as a result, and less social.
Also the way the benefits system is structured with its cliff edges. It’s something Bart talks about a fair bit and he’s quite right.
Its absurd that we have built these cliff edges in. Have you seen the carers one? Inadvertently stray over the hard cap and lose the entire payment.
We cannot reform this system and its absurd that politicians continue to pretend that they can. We need to rethink it utterly.
That's because not every benefit has been rolled into UC. Whatever you think of UC generally, the taper and savings conditions work very well compared with the legacy system. You still get high effective tax rates, but the cliff edges are smoothed out.
I think most of PBs discussions on UC miss the sanctions regime and work conditionality though, and only focus on the headline financial calculation. There's not much carrot to work under UC, but plenty of stick. You cannot sit in your arse unless you've got very young children - the bigger challenge is that a lot of these people are basically unemployable, so they are constantly rotating through the system generating loads of admin.
Anyone with kids (or who is ill and is in at least LCW) can earn £400 a month without the taper kicking in, and of course you don't pay tax or NI either. Do they bother? No.
There is quite a resistance to paying tax though. One employer offering quite good zero hours work - may have been event stewarding - said that people with other jobs tended to flounce off when they discovered basic rate tax had to be deducted. They may have been earning around the tax free allowance in their other job and therefore used to not paying any.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
It’s not going to happen though. Nobody wants more austerity. Reform certainly aren’t going to do that.
@DavidL isn't suggesting austerity, which is just a gentle squeezing of expenses (or in the case of Osborne a reduction in the rate of growth).
There needs to be a fundamental reassessment of what we want government to do. Whole functions need to be eliminated for it to be affordable long term.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
It’s not going to happen though. Nobody wants more austerity. Reform certainly aren’t going to do that.
More people have received profligacy than austerity yet still think they've suffered.
The continual cries of 'austerity' during a period of massive government borrowing and spending has had a degenerative effect on the national mentality.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
It’s not going to happen though. Nobody wants more austerity. Reform certainly aren’t going to do that.
@DavidL isn't suggesting austerity, which is just a gentle squeezing of expenses (or in the case of Osborne a reduction in the rate of growth).
There needs to be a fundamental reassessment of what we want government to do. Whole functions need to be eliminated for it to be affordable long term.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
No government could win on that, Labour would lose its leftwing voters to the Greens with that much austerity, the Tories would lose their remaining vote mostly to Reform and the LDs with that high tax
Thatcher did. But she had the drive, integrity and courage to take on vested interests, to justify her actions by the national interest and the foresight to see what the alternatives were.
Thatcher was a serious small state fiscal conservative not a populist cake for all chancer like Farage and Johnson.
Plus even Thatcher was removed in 1990 after the poll tax had become too unpopular with the public
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
It’s not going to happen though. Nobody wants more austerity. Reform certainly aren’t going to do that.
@DavidL isn't suggesting austerity, which is just a gentle squeezing of expenses (or in the case of Osborne a reduction in the rate of growth).
There needs to be a fundamental reassessment of what we want government to do. Whole functions need to be eliminated for it to be affordable long term.
They all talk-the-talk but never get there. Too used to being popular with OPM. And that included Thatcher who sold off everything to the extent we had to borrow.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
Look at the large rise in out of work benefits since Covid, from a previously high level, how is this sustainable ?
We have time to do something about it. Sadly we don’t have the political will.
A decent proportion will be sick - Covid broke a lot of people despite the "its only the flue" nonsense put about. A decent proportion will be on sickness benefits because slightly les crappy than other benefits. Nobody is on there as a lifestyle choice - we aren't a European country with generous money available, we pay a pittance.
That doesn’t make it any more sustainable though. Something needs to be done to address it and see what can be done to get people back into work and off benefits.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
And yet here we are looking at claimant count and saying "time to do something about it". About what? If people are too sick to work, then what can we do? If they're not, then its a lifestyle choice and we need "the political will" to boot them off - that's how it read at least.
Multiple factors: 1. We have largely scrapped the social security protections people had. Work is an impractical unaffordable dream for too many disabled people. 2. Employment is an expensive luxury that businesses struggle to afford. Volunteering to take on additional costs - however brilliant the disabled person is - isn't something businesses are queueing up to do 3. So many people on survival mode. Due to a variety of factors - usually stacked on top of each other - they've found themselves in this trap
There is a solution - completely rethink social security and the tax. At its core has to be UBI but that as you say is a political will question...
You interpret it however you want. I’m not going to be put into the position of defending a point I never made.
How about changing the system to remove the cliff edge that cuts in around 16 hours a week that disincentivises people from going back to work, for one option. Let people who get back into work keep a proportion of their benefits but taper it. Something Bart talks about and I already mentioned here.
This is exactly what I have been saying since well before the election, really from the point Truss tried to write a blank cheque for our energy costs and then Hunt merely wrote a humongous one.
Right now government finances should be at least neutral, arguably in surplus. No war, no recession, no pandemic, no particular stress. We are borrowing £12bn a month. Reeves went on about an £18bn black hole, raised the taxes to fill it and then blew them all and more on public sector pay. The reality is that there is a £150bn black hole and nobody will even talk about it, let alone address it.
We need to massively increase taxes, massively decrease public spending, massively reduce the public sector headcount, cut the unsustainable generosity of public sector pensions and keep this up for a generation or more. Pretending that growth is the answer is simply delusional because public sector spending grows at least as fast as the economy.
It won't get any better under Reform since they're peddling their own fantasy economics
This is where the Tories should be pressing - even if it's not an election winner - because (a) they'd be right and (b) no-one else is.
Even worse, we have parties like the moronic Lib Dem’s wanting to make even more unfounded spending such as giving billions to the WASPE women. Or they said that in a cynical ploy to get votes.
You'll be sorry when you are governed directly from Westminster by Farage and/or Johnson.
The evidence of the wise and benevolent rule of Westminster for the last few years speaks for itself.
To be fair, Holyrood has hardly delivered us paragons of virtue and rectitude either... I still cringe when I think of the loathsome Derek Mackay at a tech conference, where his key note speech to a major international audience was a 10 minute sook to Sturgeon and he failed to speak to a single issue under consideration.
You'll be sorry when you are governed directly from Westminster by Farage and/or Johnson.
The evidence of the wise and benevolent rule of Westminster for the last few years speaks for itself.
To be fair, Holyrood has hardly delivered us paragons of virtue and rectitude either... I still cringe when I think of the loathsome Derek Mackay at a tech conference, where his key note speech to a major international audience was a 10 minute sook to Sturgeon and he failed to speak to a single issue under consideration.
At least the people in my country can vote for them and can vote them out again.
Anyway, can I look forward to the revelation that the SLD's are now in favour of abolishing Holyrood?
The Telegraph's chart showing the scale of debt in the G7 has five countries with more debt than His Majesty's United Kingdom and only Germany with less (admittedly a lot less).
I'm not really sure what the point of the article is, other than to fill space.
Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility suggests that based on policy settings as of March 2024, public spending in the UK over the next 50 years would rise from 45pc to 60pc of GDP, but that tax revenues would remain static at 40pc.
As a result, public debt would rise rapidly from the late 2030s onwards to 274pc of GDP by 2075.
Fifty years is a long time in politics.
"The Telegraph is an increasingly terrible newspaper-shaped object, part n in a series on N."
(See also the bluesky thread viewcode linked to. If you have the resources to dress propaganda up as news, then propaganda beats reality. And that's a blooming hard problem to fix.)
Funnily enough my wife was lamenting that some offer or other meant she was reading a lot more from the Telegraph and she thought that this was contributing to her low mood. Its contribution is indeed depressing. I have tried to explain that the Telegraph thinks that it is its duty to decry a Labour government, even if the vast majority of the problems were inherited from the Tories. The thread @viewcode linked to does indeed show how this works.
But Jeremy Warner is a serious person and he is right about the desperate state of our finances.
It is the duty of anyone with a brain cell to decry the Government.
Comments
The questions for the Tory Party are "why?" & whither?"
But if a description of the problem depends on rolling current policy fifty years ahead, it's not an entirely sensible argument.
I never claimed they were on there as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
The problem is there will be pain, I’m afraid, and this time we all have to all be in it together.
Even Princes Street is currently undergoing a belated transition to mixed use (restaurants and hotels etc). The excellent St James' Centre has finally killed it off as a primary retail location.
Work hours have in many sectors become more flexible but therefore longer as a result, and less social.
Multiple factors:
1. We have largely scrapped the social security protections people had. Work is an impractical unaffordable dream for too many disabled people.
2. Employment is an expensive luxury that businesses struggle to afford. Volunteering to take on additional costs - however brilliant the disabled person is - isn't something businesses are queueing up to do
3. So many people on survival mode. Due to a variety of factors - usually stacked on top of each other - they've found themselves in this trap
There is a solution - completely rethink social security and the tax. At its core has to be UBI but that as you say is a political will question...
Boris as leader would undoubtedly have a flurry of interest and an initial "Boris is back!" boost for the Tories. Then everyone remembers why he was hounded out of office and we're back to the same place where the flurry of ongoing interest is a negative not a positive.
@paulhutcheon
EXC: John Swinney warns that Reform MSPs will deliberately undermine and try to abolish Holyrood.
https://x.com/paulhutcheon/status/1927254944626741259
We cannot reform this system and its absurd that politicians continue to pretend that they can. We need to rethink it utterly.
(I think about what I do, and the prospect of doing something like it for a couple more decades, and think 'f&#+ that'.)
I think most of PBs discussions on UC miss the sanctions regime and work conditionality though, and only focus on the headline financial calculation. There's not much carrot to work under UC, but plenty of stick. You cannot sit in your arse unless you've got very young children - the bigger challenge is that a lot of these people are basically unemployable, so they are constantly rotating through the system generating loads of admin.
I read that it’s part of the grandiosely named CCBMP - the City Centre and Beach Masterplan.
F1: Undercutters Ep22, with a brief post-mortem of the woeful Monaco (yet still better than last year) and a happier look ahead to Spain. And then a less happy look ahead to next year when we say goodbye to Barcelona and hello to a highly dubious Madrid track that has a 10 year contract. Also, there are some splendid graphs in the transcript.
Undercutters Ep22 is now up, Monaco post-mortem and #SpainGP preview:
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-spanish-grand-prix-predictions/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f1-2025-spanish-grand-prix-predictions/id1786574257?i=1000710051314
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/0bac5278-ca41-4c96-8ddc-d87ce1361064/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-spanish-grand-prix-predictions
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7dEYNrTSAQJPyU8AmiemiG
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/05/f1-2025-spanish-grand-prix-predictions.html
NEW THREAD
Enfield’s town centre looks better than it did, because the main shopping centre is right in the middle of it. There are still plenty of bank branches, some good restaurants, a couple of department stores, and a Waterstones.
There is quite a resistance to paying tax though. One employer offering quite good zero hours work - may have been event stewarding - said that people with other jobs tended to flounce off when they discovered basic rate tax had to be deducted. They may have been earning around the tax free allowance in their other job and therefore used to not paying any.
It won't get any better under Reform since they're peddling their own fantasy economics
This is where the Tories should be pressing - even if it's not an election winner - because (a) they'd be right and (b) no-one else is.
There needs to be a fundamental reassessment of what we want government to do. Whole functions need to be eliminated for it to be affordable long term.
The continual cries of 'austerity' during a period of massive government borrowing and spending has had a degenerative effect on the national mentality.
Plus even Thatcher was removed in 1990 after the poll tax had become too unpopular with the public
How about changing the system to remove the cliff edge that cuts in around 16 hours a week that disincentivises people from going back to work, for one option. Let people who get back into work keep a proportion of their benefits but taper it. Something Bart talks about and I already mentioned here.
Incentives matter.
Anyway, can I look forward to the revelation that the SLD's are now in favour of abolishing Holyrood?