It is housing costs that are crushing the economy, not taxes.
At least for anyone under 40 without inherited wealth.
And I can think of absolutely loads of places on the outskirts of London that have tonnes of space to build out or build up. We've already seen it in areas like Battersea that must have added many thousands of homes in recent years.
Build, build, and then build some more.
A lot of building has to be done when the population is going up by half a million a year.
Unless you want grannies lugging bricks a lot of building requires a lot of immigrant labour. We don't have the numbers of construction workers otherwise.
This is where I disagree. We lionise office jobs but there is no reason why lots of people sat in offices not doing very much (ahem) shouldn't be out in the sun building houses.
A restriction in the supply of labour and the development of AI could lead to a massive shift to more physical jobs. My prediction is much more cultural/fun stuff, a shift to a four day week to allow people to do more fun stuff, and larger proportions working in health, sport, construction and so on - stuff that can't be automated in the same way.
I think Greggs will be a vending machine within the decade and we'll all be submitting blood samples to a machine every 6 months for automatic AI-based early diagnoses. Exciting!
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
A couple of comments from the article and the comments:
1) It is not at all clear to me that the economy is broken. As a GDP we remain 6th in the world. There are imbalances and problems but we remain as a country OK. GDP per capita is comparable with France and Germany. We are talking ourselves down. There are political and redistributist solutions to many of the messes.
The starting point for serious discussion should not be: 'We are a broken third world disaster zone'. We aren't.
2) I don't support Reform, on competence grounds and on then grounds of the company they keep. And some other reasons. But it is delusional to think that they plan to enter 2029 with a Trussplus manifesto. We have to wait and see but a certainty is that they will produce a centrist, socially conservative, gimmick filled, as costed as any other party, social democrat, high tax, high spend programme, reflecting very precisely the socially conservative welfarist opinions of the people of Clacton.
Those arguing that we're Argentina and need a Millei are just idiots wishing catastrophe on the country.
What need to be is Poland.
We need to think as if we are a growing, successful eastern European economy: That means when we spend we don’t try and pretend we’re the most powerful country in the world that can afford the best of everything. No, we buy the optimal £/outcome option & accept that it’s not cutting edge, nor will it be perfect in terms of environmental or other concerns: getting a good enough outcome quickly is more important than a more perfect outcome that arrives late& expensive.
That means spending much, much less on endless legal niceties (see HS2, the proposed Thames Crossing, Nuclear plants). It means spending much less on local customisation (see every MoD project ever, HS2, Nuclear plants, etc etc). It means buying cheap & working over buying expensive & might work sometime in the future.
We need a bunch of warships for the Navy? We buy them off-the-peg from South Korea or Japan. We need a new large nuclear plant? We buy a few of the ones South Korea is turning out at the rate of one every two or three years, with no customisations or changes. etc etc etc. We need a Thames Crossing? We do it, or we don’t, without faffing about for fifteen years racking up enormous legal bills. We need to electrify the rail network? We set an annual budget & just get on with it at a steady pace, instead of endless stop-start Treasury angst which just ends up delaying the project & tripling the cost. And so on & on & on.
The problem is that doing all of this cuts into the income & raison d’être of a whole swathe of special interests, both inside & outside government. All of whom have got very used to justifying their absolute necessity to every project this country ever undertakes.
There’s a weird double-think in this country that budgets are limited, but simultaneously we must only have the best. New projects end up enormously expensive, squeezing budgets for the maintenance of existing infrastructure & often ending up with the new project itself being cheese pared back in order to fit within what is financially viable.
DOGE without the drama. Will never happen, too many vested interests.
We are a nation of lawyers, sub-contractors, gold platers and people who schedule meetings for the sake of meetings.
No, it’s not DOGE. DOGE just went in & cut programs left right & centre without thought or logic. Programs were cut just because they could be cut, not because they should be cut.
Most of the things the British state want to do are perfectly reasonable - the problem is not the programs, it is that every single time we do anything it seems to cost two to three times as much as it should because of the way we approach doing, well, everything. We can’t go on simultaneously acting as if we can afford to simultaneously delay & gold-plate every project whilst cutting other services to the bone so that we can afford to pay the inflated costs we impose on ourselves.
Consider the British Museum lack of a catalogue.
When that came up, I printed out that I had taken part, as a volunteer, in the cataloging of the basement contents of smaller museum.
When I suggested that instead of spend (probably) hundreds of millions on a project to catalogue the British Museum, that letting lose some people doing Masters and PhDs in the various areas, there was considerable derision, here.
“But it’s not a Proper Project”
Instead of a single, giant, perfect solution at a single point in time. A slower accretion of records. A relative is doing something like this with another domain - turning unread historical documents into a database, using an iPhone, OCR and some time.
Meanwhile the British museum hasn’t started working on a full catalogue.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
A key question is how to raise taxes on the wealthy, but in other ways keep the country attractive enough for many wealthy people to stay.
Many other European countries have managed this, since the postwar era.
I disagree. Having a narrow tax base is a bad plan, and having "other people" pay for things also has negative consequences.
We need to make most people better off, and then you can tax everyone more to pay for the things that need paying for. This is why I've spent years talking about rentier capitalism in Britain, that makes most people poorer. If you could tackle that then you don't have to rely on a tiny percentage of the population paying for everything.
I did use to think that increasing the personal allowance so that someone on minimum wage didn't pay any tax was the right approach (I wrote a letter saying so to Brief when he was Chancellor) but I now think that is wrong.
Someone on minimum wage should be able to afford an adequate standard of living and also make a tax contribution. They can't at the moment mainly because the cost of living is way too high.
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
That’s more of the problem. For most people, life ranges from okay to very good. Our concerns would seem laughable to most people, in most times, and places.
So, kicking the can down the road remains the preferred option.
This is true. Compared to previous times and to most other countries the UK today is a more than decent place to eke out your years. Yet a significant and growing proportion of the public feel sufficiently pissed off about life to reject all the mainstream political parties. People eh. What can you do.
Get people fitter. Restrict social media. Narrow gap between rich and poor.
People will end up significantly happier. All are achievable, more achievable than the fig leafs of substantially higher growth by tinkering with our tax code.
Well I agree - esp the 3rd point. Spreading wealth and opportunity more equally is for me just about the point of politics. If I have an ideology that is it. Seems to be out of fashion atm. People are getting suckered by demagogues, fantasists and con merchants.
I agree. Reducing inequality is definitely unfashionable at the moment, but I reckon there's still a potentially big market for it. We've rather returned to the 'greed is good' mantra of the 1980s over the last decade, but it's up to people like us, and the current Labour government, to make the case for the societal benefits of redistributive policies.
Although Starmer et al. know this, they are too craven in the face of public opinion to lead the debate; hence thus far their redistributive leanings have been far too tentative.
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
How?
Don't tax poor people close to 100% if they work more than 18-20 hours per week.
Get people to work full time rather than part time, and able to keep more of their money they earn.
The state gets more in taxes and pays less in benefits, even if it doesn't get 100% of the effort people put in.
Laffer Curve in action. And the right thing to do.
I start from the position some people such as carers can only work part time. The public sector employs a lot of part time workers and they do vital work. We need to see more private sector companies employing carers and others on a part time basis and there should be incentives to facilitate that.
Some people can only work part time.
Some people only work part time as they don't want to work for no extra income.
Not much you can do about the former, there's a lot we can do about the latter.
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
How?
Don't tax poor people close to 100% if they work more than 18-20 hours per week.
Get people to work full time rather than part time, and able to keep more of their money they earn.
The state gets more in taxes and pays less in benefits, even if it doesn't get 100% of the effort people put in.
Laffer Curve in action. And the right thing to do.
I assume you will vote for Farage again then given he has said he will raise the threshold for the basic rate of income tax to £20000?
You assume wrong. The threshold isn't the issue, its the taper that's the issue.
Besides, the threshold should be around £20000 by 2034 anyway, its not that impressive a policy.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
That's not cakeism.
"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it." - Boris, 2016.
It is housing costs that are crushing the economy, not taxes.
At least for anyone under 40 without inherited wealth.
And I can think of absolutely loads of places on the outskirts of London that have tonnes of space to build out or build up. We've already seen it in areas like Battersea that must have added many thousands of homes in recent years.
Build, build, and then build some more.
A lot of building has to be done when the population is going up by half a million a year.
Unless you want grannies lugging bricks a lot of building requires a lot of immigrant labour. We don't have the numbers of construction workers otherwise.
Remarkable how many people fall for the lump of labour fallacy on this site.
There are millions of construction workers in this country, and tens of millions of workers in this country, many of whom could with minimal training be construction workers.
Importing more people does not solve labour shortages for the same reason it does not create unemployment. Because lump of labour is a fallacy.
Import more people to construct homes and you need to build even more homes, because you've imported more people. Supply and demand go up in tandem. Ditto with other sectors of the economy.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
That's not cakeism.
“The wealthy” are paying more of the tax take than at any time in the post WWII era. The reasonably paid younger population are paying an extraordinarily large portion of their incomes in tax once you include student loan repayments (which are a tax in all but name). Marginal rates on some groups are 70+%.
The UK government is spending £44k per household. The one segment of the wealthy who are not being taxed heavily are the rich retired - those on large pensions who currently pay much lower income taxes than the rest of us whilst benefiting from the government’s largesse. Unfortunately, as we’ve just seen with the WFA (& also the WASPI campaign, which although ultimately ineffective captured a large chunk of the political establishment), raising taxes on this group is becoming increasing difficult.
The problem the UK faces is that money is going to an ever increasing population of elderly retired (in NHS & pension spending) combined with lethargic GDP growth. Past governments crossed their fingers that GDP growth would cover the demographic issues that everyone could see looming over the future of the UK. Unfortunately from 2010 we didn’t get that GDP growth (for reasons that are contested but are at least partially because UK.gov cut infrastructure investment to the bone) & now the future is here: we have the larger & ever growing elderly population & we don’t have the GDP to pay for it without it hurting somewhere.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
That's not cakeism.
"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it." - Boris, 2016.
Its the only sensible policy, other than the one of not having it and not eating it.
Was my daughters birthday last week. We gave her a cake and let her eat it. We didn't give her a choice of having it or eating it.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
That's not cakeism.
"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it." - Boris, 2016.
Indeed. Cakeism may be thinking that you can please both old Labourites and free-market fundamentalists, as Reform are finding out.
It is housing costs that are crushing the economy, not taxes.
At least for anyone under 40 without inherited wealth.
And I can think of absolutely loads of places on the outskirts of London that have tonnes of space to build out or build up. We've already seen it in areas like Battersea that must have added many thousands of homes in recent years.
Build, build, and then build some more.
A lot of building has to be done when the population is going up by half a million a year.
Unless you want grannies lugging bricks a lot of building requires a lot of immigrant labour. We don't have the numbers of construction workers otherwise.
Remarkable how many people fall for the lump of labour fallacy on this site.
There are millions of construction workers in this country, and tens of millions of workers in this country, many of whom could with minimal training be construction workers.
Importing more people does not solve labour shortages for the same reason it does not create unemployment. Because lump of labour is a fallacy.
Import more people to construct homes and you need to build even more homes, because you've imported more people. Supply and demand go up in tandem. Ditto with other sectors of the economy.
It is in fact possible to train brickies, carpenters & other trades en masse. We did it in the past & we can do it again now.
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
That’s more of the problem. For most people, life ranges from okay to very good. Our concerns would seem laughable to most people, in most times, and places.
So, kicking the can down the road remains the preferred option.
This is true. Compared to previous times and to most other countries the UK today is a more than decent place to eke out your years. Yet a significant and growing proportion of the public feel sufficiently pissed off about life to reject all the mainstream political parties. People eh. What can you do.
Get people fitter. Restrict social media. Narrow gap between rich and poor.
People will end up significantly happier. All are achievable, more achievable than the fig leafs of substantially higher growth by tinkering with our tax code.
Well I agree - esp the 3rd point. Spreading wealth and opportunity more equally is for me just about the point of politics. If I have an ideology that is it. Seems to be out of fashion atm. People are getting suckered by demagogues, fantasists and con merchants.
I agree. Reducing inequality is definitely unfashionable at the moment, but I reckon there's still a potentially big market for it. We've rather returned to the 'greed is good' mantra of the 1980s over the last decade, but it's up to people like us, and the current Labour government, to make the case for the societal benefits of redistributive policies.
Although Starmer et al. know this, they are too craven in the face of public opinion to lead the debate; hence thus far their redistributive leanings have been far too tentative.
I think greed drives a lot of socially good behaviour. The trouble is you need a bit of capital (including human capital) to exploit it, and for most people the tax system means the best place for that capital is property, or they don't have an easy way to develop their skills after university or school.
It's also simply the case that older people are more risk averse. With much more of the nation's wealth held by the older generation, the economy has stagnated.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
That's not cakeism.
"My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it." - Boris, 2016.
A couple of comments from the article and the comments:
1) It is not at all clear to me that the economy is broken. As a GDP we remain 6th in the world. There are imbalances and problems but we remain as a country OK. GDP per capita is comparable with France and Germany. We are talking ourselves down. There are political and redistributist solutions to many of the messes.
The starting point for serious discussion should not be: 'We are a broken third world disaster zone'. We aren't.
2) I don't support Reform, on competence grounds and on then grounds of the company they keep. And some other reasons. But it is delusional to think that they plan to enter 2029 with a Trussplus manifesto. We have to wait and see but a certainty is that they will produce a centrist, socially conservative, gimmick filled, as costed as any other party, social democrat, high tax, high spend programme, reflecting very precisely the socially conservative welfarist opinions of the people of Clacton.
Those arguing that we're Argentina and need a Millei are just idiots wishing catastrophe on the country.
What need to be is Poland.
We need to think as if we are a growing, successful eastern European economy: That means when we spend we don’t try and pretend we’re the most powerful country in the world that can afford the best of everything. No, we buy the optimal £/outcome option & accept that it’s not cutting edge, nor will it be perfect in terms of environmental or other concerns: getting a good enough outcome quickly is more important than a more perfect outcome that arrives late& expensive.
That means spending much, much less on endless legal niceties (see HS2, the proposed Thames Crossing, Nuclear plants). It means spending much less on local customisation (see every MoD project ever, HS2, Nuclear plants, etc etc). It means buying cheap & working over buying expensive & might work sometime in the future.
We need a bunch of warships for the Navy? We buy them off-the-peg from South Korea or Japan. We need a new large nuclear plant? We buy a few of the ones South Korea is turning out at the rate of one every two or three years, with no customisations or changes. etc etc etc. We need a Thames Crossing? We do it, or we don’t, without faffing about for fifteen years racking up enormous legal bills. We need to electrify the rail network? We set an annual budget & just get on with it at a steady pace, instead of endless stop-start Treasury angst which just ends up delaying the project & tripling the cost. And so on & on & on.
The problem is that doing all of this cuts into the income & raison d’être of a whole swathe of special interests, both inside & outside government. All of whom have got very used to justifying their absolute necessity to every project this country ever undertakes.
There’s a weird double-think in this country that budgets are limited, but simultaneously we must only have the best. New projects end up enormously expensive, squeezing budgets for the maintenance of existing infrastructure & often ending up with the new project itself being cheese pared back in order to fit within what is financially viable.
DOGE without the drama. Will never happen, too many vested interests.
We are a nation of lawyers, sub-contractors, gold platers and people who schedule meetings for the sake of meetings.
No, it’s not DOGE. DOGE just went in & cut programs left right & centre without thought or logic. Programs were cut just because they could be cut, not because they should be cut.
Most of the things the British state want to do are perfectly reasonable - the problem is not the programs, it is that every single time we do anything it seems to cost two to three times as much as it should because of the way we approach doing, well, everything. We can’t go on simultaneously acting as if we can afford to simultaneously delay & gold-plate every project whilst cutting other services to the bone so that we can afford to pay the inflated costs we impose on ourselves.
Consider the British Museum lack of a catalogue.
When that came up, I printed out that I had taken part, as a volunteer, in the cataloging of the basement contents of smaller museum.
When I suggested that instead of spend (probably) hundreds of millions on a project to catalogue the British Museum, that letting lose some people doing Masters and PhDs in the various areas, there was considerable derision, here.
“But it’s not a Proper Project”
Instead of a single, giant, perfect solution at a single point in time. A slower accretion of records. A relative is doing something like this with another domain - turning unread historical documents into a database, using an iPhone, OCR and some time.
Meanwhile the British museum hasn’t started working on a full catalogue.
Institutions like the BM are regarded (by them) as jobs programs for your NU10k, so this outcome is entirely unsurprising.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
The same as he's hid it for the last three years: a compliant media, no free speech, authoritarian repression and conscription in regions outside of Moscow.
Russia isn't a country in the western sense, its a Muscovite Empire. So long as Muscovites have food and shelter and are reasonably content, Putin is sadly reasonably secure. Its not their sons dying.
Then you get all the useful idiots who go to Moscow and say "Russia isn't hurting".
My off-topic photo quota for today . The display of Tena-Pants in the pharmacy where I had my COVID jab yesterday.
Who knew there was such variety, or are they just high-margin? PB - welcome to your future.
I would expect most men to order their Tena-Pants online. Buying them over the counter in your sixties is probably more embarrassing than buying condoms in your teens...
A couple of comments from the article and the comments:
1) It is not at all clear to me that the economy is broken. As a GDP we remain 6th in the world. There are imbalances and problems but we remain as a country OK. GDP per capita is comparable with France and Germany. We are talking ourselves down. There are political and redistributist solutions to many of the messes.
The starting point for serious discussion should not be: 'We are a broken third world disaster zone'. We aren't.
2) I don't support Reform, on competence grounds and on then grounds of the company they keep. And some other reasons. But it is delusional to think that they plan to enter 2029 with a Trussplus manifesto. We have to wait and see but a certainty is that they will produce a centrist, socially conservative, gimmick filled, as costed as any other party, social democrat, high tax, high spend programme, reflecting very precisely the socially conservative welfarist opinions of the people of Clacton.
Those arguing that we're Argentina and need a Millei are just idiots wishing catastrophe on the country.
What need to be is Poland.
We need to think as if we are a growing, successful eastern European economy: That means when we spend we don’t try and pretend we’re the most powerful country in the world that can afford the best of everything. No, we buy the optimal £/outcome option & accept that it’s not cutting edge, nor will it be perfect in terms of environmental or other concerns: getting a good enough outcome quickly is more important than a more perfect outcome that arrives late& expensive.
That means spending much, much less on endless legal niceties (see HS2, the proposed Thames Crossing, Nuclear plants). It means spending much less on local customisation (see every MoD project ever, HS2, Nuclear plants, etc etc). It means buying cheap & working over buying expensive & might work sometime in the future.
We need a bunch of warships for the Navy? We buy them off-the-peg from South Korea or Japan. We need a new large nuclear plant? We buy a few of the ones South Korea is turning out at the rate of one every two or three years, with no customisations or changes. etc etc etc. We need a Thames Crossing? We do it, or we don’t, without faffing about for fifteen years racking up enormous legal bills. We need to electrify the rail network? We set an annual budget & just get on with it at a steady pace, instead of endless stop-start Treasury angst which just ends up delaying the project & tripling the cost. And so on & on & on.
The problem is that doing all of this cuts into the income & raison d’être of a whole swathe of special interests, both inside & outside government. All of whom have got very used to justifying their absolute necessity to every project this country ever undertakes.
There’s a weird double-think in this country that budgets are limited, but simultaneously we must only have the best. New projects end up enormously expensive, squeezing budgets for the maintenance of existing infrastructure & often ending up with the new project itself being cheese pared back in order to fit within what is financially viable.
DOGE without the drama. Will never happen, too many vested interests.
We are a nation of lawyers, sub-contractors, gold platers and people who schedule meetings for the sake of meetings.
My point is that we don’t have to be that - it’s an choice we are making, as a country. Change requires first of all seeing things as they really are, not as we would wish them to be.
My off-topic photo quota for today . The display of Tena-Pants in the pharmacy where I had my COVID jab yesterday.
Who knew there was such variety, or are they just high-margin? PB - welcome to your future.
I would expect most men to order their Tena-Pants online. Buying them over the counter in your sixties is probably more embarrassing than buying condoms in your teens...
I learnt from File on Four that Ketamine use can result in needing Tena-pants... painful, irreversible bladder damage. Why would you do it to yourself? Could explain Elon's irrational mood swings.
According to the IFS, the UK tax take is still "considerably lower than the western European average" at 33.5%, rather than 39.9%.
It is, but you also need to look at the distribution of our tax take. Denmark, Finland et al levy much higher taxes lower down the income spectrum. Not something people really want to hear perhaps, but “raising taxes” realistically means raising taxes on everyone, not just the semi-mythical “wealthy”. It almost certainly means raising taxes on groups of the currently under-taxes who don’t perceive themselves as “wealthy”.
My off-topic photo quota for today . The display of Tena-Pants in the pharmacy where I had my COVID jab yesterday.
Who knew there was such variety, or are they just high-margin? PB - welcome to your future.
I would expect most men to order their Tena-Pants online. Buying them over the counter in your sixties is probably more embarrassing than buying condoms in your teens...
I learnt from File on Four that Ketamine use can result in needing Tena-pants... painful, irreversible bladder damage. Why would you do it to yourself? Could explain Elon's irrational mood swings.
It seems to be common knowledge that Elon's Ketamine use causes him to piss himself.
A couple of comments from the article and the comments:
1) It is not at all clear to me that the economy is broken. As a GDP we remain 6th in the world. There are imbalances and problems but we remain as a country OK. GDP per capita is comparable with France and Germany. We are talking ourselves down. There are political and redistributist solutions to many of the messes.
The starting point for serious discussion should not be: 'We are a broken third world disaster zone'. We aren't.
2) I don't support Reform, on competence grounds and on then grounds of the company they keep. And some other reasons. But it is delusional to think that they plan to enter 2029 with a Trussplus manifesto. We have to wait and see but a certainty is that they will produce a centrist, socially conservative, gimmick filled, as costed as any other party, social democrat, high tax, high spend programme, reflecting very precisely the socially conservative welfarist opinions of the people of Clacton.
Those arguing that we're Argentina and need a Millei are just idiots wishing catastrophe on the country.
What need to be is Poland.
We need to think as if we are a growing, successful eastern European economy: That means when we spend we don’t try and pretend we’re the most powerful country in the world that can afford the best of everything. No, we buy the optimal £/outcome option & accept that it’s not cutting edge, nor will it be perfect in terms of environmental or other concerns: getting a good enough outcome quickly is more important than a more perfect outcome that arrives late& expensive.
That means spending much, much less on endless legal niceties (see HS2, the proposed Thames Crossing, Nuclear plants). It means spending much less on local customisation (see every MoD project ever, HS2, Nuclear plants, etc etc). It means buying cheap & working over buying expensive & might work sometime in the future.
We need a bunch of warships for the Navy? We buy them off-the-peg from South Korea or Japan. We need a new large nuclear plant? We buy a few of the ones South Korea is turning out at the rate of one every two or three years, with no customisations or changes. etc etc etc. We need a Thames Crossing? We do it, or we don’t, without faffing about for fifteen years racking up enormous legal bills. We need to electrify the rail network? We set an annual budget & just get on with it at a steady pace, instead of endless stop-start Treasury angst which just ends up delaying the project & tripling the cost. And so on & on & on.
The problem is that doing all of this cuts into the income & raison d’être of a whole swathe of special interests, both inside & outside government. All of whom have got very used to justifying their absolute necessity to every project this country ever undertakes.
There’s a weird double-think in this country that budgets are limited, but simultaneously we must only have the best. New projects end up enormously expensive, squeezing budgets for the maintenance of existing infrastructure & often ending up with the new project itself being cheese pared back in order to fit within what is financially viable.
DOGE without the drama. Will never happen, too many vested interests.
We are a nation of lawyers, sub-contractors, gold platers and people who schedule meetings for the sake of meetings.
My point is that we don’t have to be that - it’s an choice we are making, as a country. Change requires first of all seeing things as they really are, not as we would wish them to be.
But politicians get elected by telling people that things are as they wish them to be - by pandering to their hopes and prejudices, not by dully expounding economic common sense.
And if one politician doesn't, the next will happily take his voters by doing so.
Don't think of it as a conscious choice, think of it as a dangerous national addiction.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
According to the IFS, the UK tax take is still "considerably lower than the western European average" at 33.5%, rather than 39.9%.
It is, but you also need to look at the distribution of our tax take. Denmark, Finland et al levy much higher taxes lower down the income spectrum. Not something people really want to hear perhaps, but “raising taxes” realistically means raising taxes on everyone, not just the semi-mythical “wealthy”. It almost certainly means raising taxes on groups of the currently under-taxes who don’t perceive themselves as “wealthy”.
The problem is the real marginal tax rate paid to people on the same income can vary wildly.
Have a £30k income from letting out properties? Get taxed 20%
Have a £30k income from a graduate job? Get taxed 20+8+9 = 37%
If you're claiming benefits there's a further 55% on top.
Switch on Radio 5 Live's phone-in programme and it's someone calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. Next caller: "There's plenty of money but it isn't being fairly distributed". Cakeism as usual.
That's not cakeism.
Why not?
Two different callers making two different arguments, that's not cakeism.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
The money is running out. The amount of the sign-on bonuses are already down by 35% from their peak. The numbers signing up are below the losses being inflicted daily.
Which will piss off the senior officers who have been extracting those sign-on bonuses from the mugs who signed up.
There's a natural space here for the Conservatives to grab the mantle of fiscal responsibility from Reform and Labour, as Matthew Parris wrote over the weekend. However, Kemi seems more interested in picking (and losing) peripheral fights on free speech and culture.
If they don't, then the Liberal Democrats in theory could move into this space - but that'd require them to drop much of the social democrat bit, and given the party is built on beards and sandals that might be a stretch.
Its easier to advocate fiscal responsibility in theory than when it requires advocating actual policies.
To advocate fiscal responsibility requires advocating the end of the triple lock, winter fuel allowance and pension credits.
Plus an increase in the state retirement age to 70 and the ending of DB pensions in the public sector.
It also requires advocating the reform and increase of council tax, especially for the more expensive properties.
And freezing hospital spending and redirecting to public health and primary care. Effectively a brutal assault on the Conservative's only remaining voter cohort.
That's far too crude imo. Hospitals are heavily involved in preventative and public health work.
And a shift to prevention / public health has been the direction for decades.
Yes, you're right about some hospital work being in that area - but there is serious definition creep when it comes to preventative policy. Preventing someone's Type 2 diabetes from killing them is sometimes called secondary or tertiary prevention.
What you want is primary prevention - an environment where people's diets and lifestyle don't lead to it in the first place. Otherwise, NHS spending will continue to explode.
(I'm not convinced that public health has been increasing as a proportion of spending. My understanding was it's been cut significantly - I'll check later once I've sorted my emails out)
The best primary prevention, I'll naturally argue, in England is opening up and maintaining the public footpath network (and the other non-PROW footpath networks) to the extent that they become available and practical for local journeys.
The average is that in England we have 2-3 miles of recognised Public Footpaths, Bridleways etc per square mile of country. And at least another mile which is not recognised.
One that I want numbers on is the effect of 1-3 million more dog owners since COVID on public health, Fido demands walkies, which means that 1-3 million more people have to walk every day. Sedentary people can be identified by their cat.
That's such a massive generalisation. We have two cats, are both of us are (ahem) somewhat active, and far from sedentary...
I'd also query the assumption that those people who got dogs during Covid are giving them anywhere near enough exercise.
Feline paralysis is a well-known affliction. I had the issue yesterday when one of our cats, for the first time, deigned to allow me to act as its chair. Fortunately I was at my PC at the time, so I could still get some stuff done whilst the cat dozed.
Jenrick having a pop at David Bull over the immigration lifeblood comment is making some low key waves on social media. Quite a bit of 'i think this guy is our best shot actually' stuff. Jenrick is the next break everyone's hearts anti hero
Support for a large increase in house building in Britons' local area falls to 42%, the lowest level since November 2021 and joint-lowest since YouGov began asking this question in 2019
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
The money is running out. The amount of the sign-on bonuses are already down by 35% from their peak. The numbers signing up are below the losses being inflicted daily.
Which will piss off the senior officers who have been extracting those sign-on bonuses from the mugs who signed up.
It is, but Russia still has many peasants from outside Moscow who can be conscripted though.
According to the IFS, the UK tax take is still "considerably lower than the western European average" at 33.5%, rather than 39.9%.
It is, but you also need to look at the distribution of our tax take. Denmark, Finland et al levy much higher taxes lower down the income spectrum. Not something people really want to hear perhaps, but “raising taxes” realistically means raising taxes on everyone, not just the semi-mythical “wealthy”. It almost certainly means raising taxes on groups of the currently under-taxes who don’t perceive themselves as “wealthy”.
Indeed. But mosr f those countries also have higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy, too, as I mentioned earlier.
It's all conditioned across society by a much greater understanding of what tax means, and what the quid pro quo is.
Unless we change that, we'll never get either middling, or high, earners to pay more.
As so often happens, a lot of it all depends on a less arrogant attitude to watching the rest of Western Eurioe, which is the opposite direction of where we've been heading recently.
According to the IFS, the UK tax take is still "considerably lower than the western European average" at 33.5%, rather than 39.9%.
It is, but you also need to look at the distribution of our tax take. Denmark, Finland et al levy much higher taxes lower down the income spectrum. Not something people really want to hear perhaps, but “raising taxes” realistically means raising taxes on everyone, not just the semi-mythical “wealthy”. It almost certainly means raising taxes on groups of the currently under-taxes who don’t perceive themselves as “wealthy”.
But if everybody in Denmark, Finland can see a doctor, can get a dentist, gets housing, gets childcare - are they worse off with higher taxes? Maybe if they smoke, vape, drink. Are we a better society where they can indulge themselves with their lower tax/lower service provision mix?
Support for a large increase in house building in Britons' local area falls to 42%, the lowest level since November 2021 and joint-lowest since YouGov began asking this question in 2019
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
The same as he's hid it for the last three years: a compliant media, no free speech, authoritarian repression and conscription in regions outside of Moscow.
Russia isn't a country in the western sense, its a Muscovite Empire. So long as Muscovites have food and shelter and are reasonably content, Putin is sadly reasonably secure. Its not their sons dying.
Then you get all the useful idiots who go to Moscow and say "Russia isn't hurting".
Also note how Russian rhetoric has not changed much since the invasion started. Their starting point for negotiations is still a maximalist one, and they show no inclination to moderate that position. Ukraine has to give up territory Russia does not control, and had to weaken itself militarily and politically. That's their starting point for negotiations, and ending point.
(A whole back I read that this is standard for Russian 'negotiations', going back to Stalin's time. Go to the table with what you demand, and don't budge. Let everyone else move to your position.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
Yes, but it's markedly decreased their fossil fuel income, and made getting those western components much harder and more expensive.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
If we're going to reach the end state that we desire (the defeat of Russian Imperialism) we have to be realistic about our past successes and failures so that we can take the future actions required to succeed.
Sanctions on Russia have not been as effective as hoped, and Russia's ability to manufacture war material continues to expand.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
Yes, but it's markedly decreased their fossil fuel income, and made getting those western components much harder and more expensive.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
The fall in oil prices must be really hurting them. In the short term that just makes Putin even more committed to the war against Ukraine - what other choice does he have that doesn’t end in his humiliation? Unfortunately for the rest of us the inexorable extension of that logic is that Russia intends on going to war with Europe after looting Ukraine if things continue in this vein - how else can they survive except by looting eastern Europe (again)?
It’s the same internal logic that drove the Germans to attack France & Poland in 1939: Their economy was on the brink of collapsing internally & only by capturing the economic output of neighbouring countries could the regime hope to survive, having spent every available resource on re-armament.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
Yes, but it's markedly decreased their fossil fuel income, and made getting those western components much harder and more expensive.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
If we're going to reach the end state that we desire (the defeat of Russian Imperialism) we have to be realistic about our past successes and failures so that we can take the future actions required to succeed.
Sanctions on Russia have not been as effective as hoped, and Russia's ability to manufacture war material continues to expand.
We also have to be realistic about the US.
Already two weeks ago... “I’ll let you know in 2 weeks whether Putin is playing us. If so, we’ll respond differently.”
I saw/listened to a vid on this a few weeks back. But my swiss-cheese memory stops me from recalling it. I think they're being replaced with a stopgap (Archer?) until a more permanent (RCH155?) option is in place.
The replacements
RCH155 (a gun Mission Module strapped to a Boxer Drive Module. The Boxer is modularised, coming in two pieces, like Thunderbird 2)
Archer (a big lorry with a big gun on the back. It looks as daft as you think but it works)
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
Yes, but it's markedly decreased their fossil fuel income, and made getting those western components much harder and more expensive.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
If we're going to reach the end state that we desire (the defeat of Russian Imperialism) we have to be realistic about our past successes and failures so that we can take the future actions required to succeed.
Sanctions on Russia have not been as effective as hoped, and Russia's ability to manufacture war material continues to expand.
We also have to be realistic about the US.
Already two weeks ago... “I’ll let you know in 2 weeks whether Putin is playing us. If so, we’ll respond differently.”
I saw/listened to a vid on this a few weeks back. But my swiss-cheese memory stops me from recalling it. I think they're being replaced with a stopgap (Archer?) until a more permanent (RCH155?) option is in place.
The replacements
RCH155 (a gun Mission Module strapped to a Boxer Drive Module. The Boxer is modularised, coming in two pieces, like Thunderbird 2)
Archer (a big lorry with a big gun on the back. It looks as daft as you think but it works)
We don't really have much of a gap, as tube artillery is of approximately zero use in defending the UK itself, and the likelihood of our deploying the army anywhere but in defence of Europe over the next half decade is also approximately zero.
So sending all the AS90s now makes very good sense, with little downside.
According to the IFS, the UK tax take is still "considerably lower than the western European average" at 33.5%, rather than 39.9%.
It is, but you also need to look at the distribution of our tax take. Denmark, Finland et al levy much higher taxes lower down the income spectrum. Not something people really want to hear perhaps, but “raising taxes” realistically means raising taxes on everyone, not just the semi-mythical “wealthy”. It almost certainly means raising taxes on groups of the currently under-taxes who don’t perceive themselves as “wealthy”.
But if everybody in Denmark, Finland can see a doctor, can get a dentist, gets housing, gets childcare - are they worse off with higher taxes? Maybe if they smoke, vape, drink. Are we a better society where they can indulge themselves with their lower tax/lower service provision mix?
That’s ultimately a political question of course. Meanwhile the UK seems to continue blindly stumbling on believing that we can have this level of services without a similar level of taxation /and/ that if we do raise taxes we can always do so on somebody else.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
Yes, but it's markedly decreased their fossil fuel income, and made getting those western components much harder and more expensive.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
If we're going to reach the end state that we desire (the defeat of Russian Imperialism) we have to be realistic about our past successes and failures so that we can take the future actions required to succeed.
Sanctions on Russia have not been as effective as hoped, and Russia's ability to manufacture war material continues to expand.
We also have to be realistic about the US.
Already two weeks ago... “I’ll let you know in 2 weeks whether Putin is playing us. If so, we’ll respond differently.”
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
Yes, but it's markedly decreased their fossil fuel income, and made getting those western components much harder and more expensive.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
If we're going to reach the end state that we desire (the defeat of Russian Imperialism) we have to be realistic about our past successes and failures so that we can take the future actions required to succeed.
Sanctions on Russia have not been as effective as hoped, and Russia's ability to manufacture war material continues to expand.
We also have to be realistic about the US.
Already two weeks ago... “I’ll let you know in 2 weeks whether Putin is playing us. If so, we’ll respond differently.”
Yes. Europe is pretty much alone at this point, with Russia massively out producing it in terms of war material.
There's a massive amount of complacency and denial in Europe about our vulnerability.
Europe has massively increased both shell & drone production to supply the war in Ukraine.
We’re probably short on tank & IFV production though.
We're still a long way behind Russian production, which only goes to show how bad the situation was before the February 2022 invasion, and how much more remains to be done.
My off-topic photo quota for today . The display of Tena-Pants in the pharmacy where I had my COVID jab yesterday.
Who knew there was such variety, or are they just high-margin? PB - welcome to your future.
I would expect most men to order their Tena-Pants online. Buying them over the counter in your sixties is probably more embarrassing than buying condoms in your teens...
I learnt from File on Four that Ketamine use can result in needing Tena-pants... painful, irreversible bladder damage. Why would you do it to yourself? Could explain Elon's irrational mood swings.
It seems to be common knowledge that Elon's Ketamine use causes him to piss himself.
I question his "genius" if he's prepared to piss away his bladder walls permanently for whatever temporary high he gets. There are other highs out there.
I saw/listened to a vid on this a few weeks back. But my swiss-cheese memory stops me from recalling it. I think they're being replaced with a stopgap (Archer?) until a more permanent (RCH155?) option is in place.
The replacements
RCH155 (a gun Mission Module strapped to a Boxer Drive Module. The Boxer is modularised, coming in two pieces, like Thunderbird 2)
Archer (a big lorry with a big gun on the back. It looks as daft as you think but it works)
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Add to which, of course, the million or more who have fled to avoid being conscripted.
And consider also that these two million men are those of the generation who would ordinarily a) work, b) procreate, and c) consume.
It is hard to see how Russia is not in all sorts of trouble.
Whilst I would love Russia to suffer as much as possible, especially since I’ve just started dating a Ukrainian and so clearly need to become wildly one-eyed about it all, I’m not sure the issues you mentioned will be as catastrophic as hoped.
I was listening to a great podcast which, in summary, showed that wherever good records are kept they show big bounces in births after wars going back centuries.
There were many reasons - survivors coming back and sleeping with anyone that moves to celebrate or forget, couples realising how precious life is so banging out giant families etc. effectively the numbers killed is usually less than the numbers born and the population curve deviates upwards from the previous pattern.
Re the generation consuming, noting how the Russians use the poor to fill the army (not unusual in general armies but noticeably so in Russia) you aren’t losing the middle classes from wealthier regions and cities so not the biggest consumers.
The ones you really want dying to damage Russia aren’t the ones who are dying but the ones at the top but there you go.
I saw/listened to a vid on this a few weeks back. But my swiss-cheese memory stops me from recalling it. I think they're being replaced with a stopgap (Archer?) until a more permanent (RCH155?) option is in place.
The replacements
RCH155 (a gun Mission Module strapped to a Boxer Drive Module. The Boxer is modularised, coming in two pieces, like Thunderbird 2)
Archer (a big lorry with a big gun on the back. It looks as daft as you think but it works)
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Add to which, of course, the million or more who have fled to avoid being conscripted.
And consider also that these two million men are those of the generation who would ordinarily a) work, b) procreate, and c) consume.
It is hard to see how Russia is not in all sorts of trouble.
Whilst I would love Russia to suffer as much as possible, especially since I’ve just started dating a Ukrainian and so clearly need to become wildly one-eyed about it all, I’m not sure the issues you mentioned will be as catastrophic as hoped.
I was listening to a great podcast which, in summary, showed that wherever good records are kept they show big bounces in births after wars going back centuries.
There were many reasons - survivors coming back and sleeping with anyone that moves to celebrate or forget, couples realising how precious life is so banging out giant families etc. effectively the numbers killed is usually less than the numbers born and the population curve deviates upwards from the previous pattern.
Re the generation consuming, noting how the Russians use the poor to fill the army (not unusual in general armies but noticeably so in Russia) you aren’t losing the middle classes from wealthier regions and cities so not the biggest consumers.
The ones you really want dying to damage Russia aren’t the ones who are dying but the ones at the top but there you go.
It's not really people who matter, it's industrial production of military equipment.
So the news that Ukraine hit the largest Russian gunpowder factory last night is good news, but the news that the North Koreans are going to start producing Shahed drones for Russia is bad.
To also balance out my doom on the war front this morning, the Ukrainians have had some encouraging aviation success recently - the first Russian jet shot down by an F-16, and they've been hitting more ground targets with their own air force too.
Interesting one too. Stroud not a particularly strong Reform area so we will see if their surge has carried here. Labour defence as it was the second place Councillor from 2024 in the ward but Tories 'defending' highest vote share from 2024. Greens quite strong locally too. I'd guess Reform gain on high 20s percent from a very tight Tory/Labour second place race on low 20s. Result might be close to national polling
A couple of comments from the article and the comments:
1) It is not at all clear to me that the economy is broken. As a GDP we remain 6th in the world. There are imbalances and problems but we remain as a country OK. GDP per capita is comparable with France and Germany. We are talking ourselves down. There are political and redistributist solutions to many of the messes.
The starting point for serious discussion should not be: 'We are a broken third world disaster zone'. We aren't.
2) I don't support Reform, on competence grounds and on then grounds of the company they keep. And some other reasons. But it is delusional to think that they plan to enter 2029 with a Trussplus manifesto. We have to wait and see but a certainty is that they will produce a centrist, socially conservative, gimmick filled, as costed as any other party, social democrat, high tax, high spend programme, reflecting very precisely the socially conservative welfarist opinions of the people of Clacton.
Those arguing that we're Argentina and need a Millei are just idiots wishing catastrophe on the country.
What need to be is Poland.
We need to think as if we are a growing, successful eastern European economy: That means when we spend we don’t try and pretend we’re the most powerful country in the world that can afford the best of everything. No, we buy the optimal £/outcome option & accept that it’s not cutting edge, nor will it be perfect in terms of environmental or other concerns: getting a good enough outcome quickly is more important than a more perfect outcome that arrives late& expensive.
That means spending much, much less on endless legal niceties (see HS2, the proposed Thames Crossing, Nuclear plants). It means spending much less on local customisation (see every MoD project ever, HS2, Nuclear plants, etc etc). It means buying cheap & working over buying expensive & might work sometime in the future.
We need a bunch of warships for the Navy? We buy them off-the-peg from South Korea or Japan. We need a new large nuclear plant? We buy a few of the ones South Korea is turning out at the rate of one every two or three years, with no customisations or changes. etc etc etc. We need a Thames Crossing? We do it, or we don’t, without faffing about for fifteen years racking up enormous legal bills. We need to electrify the rail network? We set an annual budget & just get on with it at a steady pace, instead of endless stop-start Treasury angst which just ends up delaying the project & tripling the cost. And so on & on & on.
The problem is that doing all of this cuts into the income & raison d’être of a whole swathe of special interests, both inside & outside government. All of whom have got very used to justifying their absolute necessity to every project this country ever undertakes.
There’s a weird double-think in this country that budgets are limited, but simultaneously we must only have the best. New projects end up enormously expensive, squeezing budgets for the maintenance of existing infrastructure & often ending up with the new project itself being cheese pared back in order to fit within what is financially viable.
DOGE without the drama. Will never happen, too many vested interests.
We are a nation of lawyers, sub-contractors, gold platers and people who schedule meetings for the sake of meetings.
No, it’s not DOGE. DOGE just went in & cut programs left right & centre without thought or logic. Programs were cut just because they could be cut, not because they should be cut.
Most of the things the British state want to do are perfectly reasonable - the problem is not the programs, it is that every single time we do anything it seems to cost two to three times as much as it should because of the way we approach doing, well, everything. We can’t go on simultaneously acting as if we can afford to simultaneously delay & gold-plate every project whilst cutting other services to the bone so that we can afford to pay the inflated costs we impose on ourselves.
Consider the British Museum lack of a catalogue.
When that came up, I printed out that I had taken part, as a volunteer, in the cataloging of the basement contents of smaller museum.
When I suggested that instead of spend (probably) hundreds of millions on a project to catalogue the British Museum, that letting lose some people doing Masters and PhDs in the various areas, there was considerable derision, here.
“But it’s not a Proper Project”
Instead of a single, giant, perfect solution at a single point in time. A slower accretion of records. A relative is doing something like this with another domain - turning unread historical documents into a database, using an iPhone, OCR and some time.
Meanwhile the British museum hasn’t started working on a full catalogue.
Institutions like the BM are regarded (by them) as jobs programs for your NU10k, so this outcome is entirely unsurprising.
The response *here* was interesting - sneering at volunteerism, not a Proper Project etc
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Add to which, of course, the million or more who have fled to avoid being conscripted.
And consider also that these two million men are those of the generation who would ordinarily a) work, b) procreate, and c) consume.
It is hard to see how Russia is not in all sorts of trouble.
Whilst I would love Russia to suffer as much as possible, especially since I’ve just started dating a Ukrainian and so clearly need to become wildly one-eyed about it all, I’m not sure the issues you mentioned will be as catastrophic as hoped.
I was listening to a great podcast which, in summary, showed that wherever good records are kept they show big bounces in births after wars going back centuries.
There were many reasons - survivors coming back and sleeping with anyone that moves to celebrate or forget, couples realising how precious life is so banging out giant families etc. effectively the numbers killed is usually less than the numbers born and the population curve deviates upwards from the previous pattern.
Re the generation consuming, noting how the Russians use the poor to fill the army (not unusual in general armies but noticeably so in Russia) you aren’t losing the middle classes from wealthier regions and cities so not the biggest consumers.
The ones you really want dying to damage Russia aren’t the ones who are dying but the ones at the top but there you go.
It's not really people who matter, it's industrial production of military equipment.
So the news that Ukraine hit the largest Russian gunpowder factory last night is good news, but the bed that the North Koreans are going to start producing Shahed drones for Russia is bad.
To also balance out my doom on the war front this morning, the Ukrainians have had some encouraging aviation success recently - the first Russian jet shot down by an F-16, and they've been hitting more ground targets with their own air force too.
My off-topic photo quota for today . The display of Tena-Pants in the pharmacy where I had my COVID jab yesterday.
Who knew there was such variety, or are they just high-margin? PB - welcome to your future.
I would expect most men to order their Tena-Pants online. Buying them over the counter in your sixties is probably more embarrassing than buying condoms in your teens...
'Driving' home with them in the basket of ones mobility scooter is a touch embarrassing, yes!
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
How?
Don't tax poor people close to 100% if they work more than 18-20 hours per week.
Get people to work full time rather than part time, and able to keep more of their money they earn.
The state gets more in taxes and pays less in benefits, even if it doesn't get 100% of the effort people put in.
Laffer Curve in action. And the right thing to do.
I assume you will vote for Farage again then given he has said he will raise the threshold for the basic rate of income tax to £20000?
You assume wrong. The threshold isn't the issue, its the taper that's the issue.
Besides, the threshold should be around £20000 by 2034 anyway, its not that impressive a policy.
So basically you want taxpayers to keep funding benefits even when workers are earning not just £20000 but significantly above that too
AFAIK its not unconstitutional, but its blatantly illegal.
Nothing, as far as I know, in the constitution prevents the military from being used to assist with law enforcement. For a long time in the Reconstruction Era they were, and there are times where the law permits it today.
What makes it illegal is the Posse Comitatus Act, which ironically was not passed as a piece of liberal protection of civil liberties, but was instead a "States Rights" anti-Reconstruction anti-Federal Government legislation to enable racial segregation and oppression without Federal oversight.
Trump is flagrantly breaking that federal law, not the constitution.
With regard to today's test cricket championship final, a sixth day is available — but only in the event of weather delays. It can't be used to conclude the match in the absence of such delays.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Add to which, of course, the million or more who have fled to avoid being conscripted.
And consider also that these two million men are those of the generation who would ordinarily a) work, b) procreate, and c) consume.
It is hard to see how Russia is not in all sorts of trouble.
Whilst I would love Russia to suffer as much as possible, especially since I’ve just started dating a Ukrainian and so clearly need to become wildly one-eyed about it all, I’m not sure the issues you mentioned will be as catastrophic as hoped.
I was listening to a great podcast which, in summary, showed that wherever good records are kept they show big bounces in births after wars going back centuries.
There were many reasons - survivors coming back and sleeping with anyone that moves to celebrate or forget, couples realising how precious life is so banging out giant families etc. effectively the numbers killed is usually less than the numbers born and the population curve deviates upwards from the previous pattern.
Re the generation consuming, noting how the Russians use the poor to fill the army (not unusual in general armies but noticeably so in Russia) you aren’t losing the middle classes from wealthier regions and cities so not the biggest consumers.
The ones you really want dying to damage Russia aren’t the ones who are dying but the ones at the top but there you go.
It's not really people who matter, it's industrial production of military equipment.
So the news that Ukraine hit the largest Russian gunpowder factory last night is good news, but the news that the North Koreans are going to start producing Shahed drones for Russia is bad.
To also balance out my doom on the war front this morning, the Ukrainians have had some encouraging aviation success recently - the first Russian jet shot down by an F-16, and they've been hitting more ground targets with their own air force too.
The loss of most of their A-50 AWACs means the Russians can now only cover one front. The Ukrainians receiving their own from Sweden is giving them the opportunity to intercept Russian bombers, not just with F-16s but with the ancient but still potent (and very long range/high altitude) S200 missiles.
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
How?
Don't tax poor people close to 100% if they work more than 18-20 hours per week.
Get people to work full time rather than part time, and able to keep more of their money they earn.
The state gets more in taxes and pays less in benefits, even if it doesn't get 100% of the effort people put in.
Laffer Curve in action. And the right thing to do.
I assume you will vote for Farage again then given he has said he will raise the threshold for the basic rate of income tax to £20000?
You assume wrong. The threshold isn't the issue, its the taper that's the issue.
Besides, the threshold should be around £20000 by 2034 anyway, its not that impressive a policy.
So basically you want taxpayers to keep funding benefits even when workers are earning not just £20000 but significantly above that too
I want to eliminate the concept of income-related benefits altogether and merge benefits and tax into a single system with a single threshold and single tax rate, as recommended by Milton Friedman.
With regard to today's test cricket championship final, a sixth day is available — but only in the event of weather delays. It can't be used to conclude the match in the absence of such delays.
There's a new trend for more open adverts, for previously awkward products.
I expect to see older people dancing at raves, in their incontinence pads, next.
When I started in pharmacy, back in the late 50's 'women's sanitary products' were handed out in plain brown wrappers and certainly not advertised on the television. or, indeed, the newspapers.
With regard to today's test cricket championship final, a sixth day is available — but only in the event of weather delays. It can't be used to conclude the match in the absence of such delays.
Not a bad option for a one off game but harder in the compressed series we have now (back-to-back tests with 3 days between).
Personally I would make sides bowl the 90 overs unless there is bad light/weather issues, no matter how long it takes.
The problem is continuing the Test later in the evening could often run into light issues.
There's no reason for Tests to start so late in the day. Why not start at 10am and end at the same time as now, or earlier if and only if the 90 overs are done?
There's a new trend for more open adverts, for previously awkward products.
I expect to see older people dancing at raves, in their incontinence pads, next.
When I started in pharmacy, back in the late 50's 'women's sanitary products' were handed out in plain brown wrappers and certainly not advertised on the television. or, indeed, the newspapers.
I love the plain brown wrappers. Sounds like a gangster transaction, or one of Boris Johnsons contracts a few years back.
Yes Reform would be a low tax and big spend party. Their supporters may back that but voters overall want a bit more prudence
No they won't they would (hoping they don't get the chance) be a high tax and high spend government, like every other wealthy European country. It is completely delusional to think otherwise.
Their spending policies will mirror the wishes of the people of Clacton. Take as guess as to their opinions: we want more NHS, more pensions, more disability payments, and a proper army.
What taxes would Reform put up?
Do you think they are going to tell you that!!?? However, even if they don't put up taxes, Reform in government will inherit a high tax, high spend economy. What I am saying is that Reform will not significantly cut TME (the public sector spending). They will not be trusted to borrow at a higher rate than now (or even that).
If sensible(!!) they would tax pensioners (me) more, reform council tax to raise it, put VAT at 5% on food and introduce a 'luxury' rate of VAT. And increase fuel and alcohol duty.
As Asquith wisely said, we shall have to wait and see.
IMO Reform are pure marketing, as they have no significant or practical policies that I can detect, just Nigel with a magaphone and a kaleidoscope.
Absolutely fair point. My point is that, SFAICS, they intend to govern if they can. For this they will be need a manifesto which is at least remotely as plausible as Lab/Con ones are. Ie, not very but not entirely constructed of unicorns. We shall see this in 2029 and not before, but Farage's direction of travel is clear. Old fashioned, a few gimmicks, closed borders, social democracy, high spend.
With regard to today's test cricket championship final, a sixth day is available — but only in the event of weather delays. It can't be used to conclude the match in the absence of such delays.
Not a bad option for a one off game but harder in the compressed series we have now (back-to-back tests with 3 days between).
Personally I would make sides bowl the 90 overs unless there is bad light/weather issues, no matter how long it takes.
The problem is continuing the Test later in the evening could often run into light issues.
There's no reason for Tests to start so late in the day. Why not start at 10am and end at the same time as now, or earlier if and only if the 90 overs are done?
If they'd started earlier today, would the Aussies have lost even more wickets? Must admit, as a cricket-watcher my loyalties are conflicted. Normally it's ABA; Anyone But Australia but I'm not really pro the Saffirs, either.
Anything north of 800 Russian casualties in Ukraine will take them over the one million dead, maimed, missing and POWs.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Lots of non-Russians in those numbers, and he's been able to buy the Russian deaths with money.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
Yes, but it's markedly decreased their fossil fuel income, and made getting those western components much harder and more expensive.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
If we're going to reach the end state that we desire (the defeat of Russian Imperialism) we have to be realistic about our past successes and failures so that we can take the future actions required to succeed.
Sanctions on Russia have not been as effective as hoped, and Russia's ability to manufacture war material continues to expand.
We also have to be realistic about the US.
Already two weeks ago... “I’ll let you know in 2 weeks whether Putin is playing us. If so, we’ll respond differently.”
Yes. Europe is pretty much alone at this point, with Russia massively out producing it in terms of war material.
There's a massive amount of complacency and denial in Europe about our vulnerability.
Europe has massively increased both shell & drone production to supply the war in Ukraine.
We’re probably short on tank & IFV production though.
That's an important point, in that I was listening to an "expert" commentator yesterday pointing out that European artillery shell manufacture was small compared to what was needed - whilst in reality Europe had supplied 2/3 of the promised "2 million rounds for 2025" by May.
There's a lot of behind-the-curve information out there, even amongst now-armchair Generals.
See the civil rights precedents in using the National Guard to backup/protect Federal agents.
To federalise the national guard, against the wishes of the state governor, at an absolute minimum the executive must invoke the Insurrection Act (whether or not that is justified would be a matter for the courts). Trump has not done so.
Using federal troops in this manner is blatantly unconstitutional.
There's a new trend for more open adverts, for previously awkward products.
I expect to see older people dancing at raves, in their incontinence pads, next.
When I started in pharmacy, back in the late 50's 'women's sanitary products' were handed out in plain brown wrappers and certainly not advertised on the television. or, indeed, the newspapers.
I'm glad times have changed.
Though I'm equally glad my wife had the conversation with my daughter lately to prepare her for concepts like that and that I didn't have to be the one to do so.
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
How?
Don't tax poor people close to 100% if they work more than 18-20 hours per week.
Get people to work full time rather than part time, and able to keep more of their money they earn.
The state gets more in taxes and pays less in benefits, even if it doesn't get 100% of the effort people put in.
Laffer Curve in action. And the right thing to do.
I assume you will vote for Farage again then given he has said he will raise the threshold for the basic rate of income tax to £20000?
You assume wrong. The threshold isn't the issue, its the taper that's the issue.
Besides, the threshold should be around £20000 by 2034 anyway, its not that impressive a policy.
So basically you want taxpayers to keep funding benefits even when workers are earning not just £20000 but significantly above that too
I want to eliminate the concept of income-related benefits altogether and merge benefits and tax into a single system with a single threshold and single tax rate, as recommended by Milton Friedman.
Which still involves the question of where you set the threshold
With regard to today's test cricket championship final, a sixth day is available — but only in the event of weather delays. It can't be used to conclude the match in the absence of such delays.
Not a bad option for a one off game but harder in the compressed series we have now (back-to-back tests with 3 days between).
Personally I would make sides bowl the 90 overs unless there is bad light/weather issues, no matter how long it takes.
The problem is continuing the Test later in the evening could often run into light issues.
There's no reason for Tests to start so late in the day. Why not start at 10am and end at the same time as now, or earlier if and only if the 90 overs are done?
Dew and dampness, depending on the month. I think 10.30 is a good compromise (as the current test is doing, and I think as the famous 2005 Ashes was. In England in particular the evening light isn't really an issue in May, June, July and August.
According to the IFS, the UK tax take is still "considerably lower than the western European average" at 33.5%, rather than 39.9%.
This may need explaining and clarifying as UK public spending (TME) is about 44/45% of GDP. I suspect making comparisons is actually a very uneven and hard process.
With regard to today's test cricket championship final, a sixth day is available — but only in the event of weather delays. It can't be used to conclude the match in the absence of such delays.
Not a bad option for a one off game but harder in the compressed series we have now (back-to-back tests with 3 days between).
Personally I would make sides bowl the 90 overs unless there is bad light/weather issues, no matter how long it takes.
The problem is continuing the Test later in the evening could often run into light issues.
There's no reason for Tests to start so late in the day. Why not start at 10am and end at the same time as now, or earlier if and only if the 90 overs are done?
If they'd started earlier today, would the Aussies have lost even more wickets? Must admit, as a cricket-watcher my loyalties are conflicted. Normally it's ABA; Anyone But Australia but I'm not really pro the Saffirs, either.
Aussies to win and then we beat them in their own backyard. And then, pace Scotland's footballers in 1967, we become world champions,
See the civil rights precedents in using the National Guard to backup/protect Federal agents.
To federalise the national guard, against the wishes of the state governor, at an absolute minimum the executive must invoke the Insurrection Act (whether or not that is justified would be a matter for the courts). Trump has not done so.
Using federal troops in this manner is blatantly unconstitutional.
The federal judge Newsom applied to refused to pass an injunction against the ongoing use of federal law enforcement pending a further hearing later so there doesn't appear to be a clear violation here according to the court or they'd have acted to injunct pending hearing
At least we’re talking about the substantive issues this morning.
Like many others, I’d prefer a much reduced deficit and reduced borrowing but the impact of reducing public services is disproportionately felt by those with less and generally not those demanding either overt tax cuts or the euphemism of “supply side reforms”.
Yet the Lafferites have a valid point - how do we get long term sustainable growth? Anyone can buy a boom and bust but long term growth? It’s often come from innovation and ingenuity which often means new jobs create those which no longer exist.
We remain a wealthy country and many, though by no means all, live a comfortable existence. Land Value Taxation has to be on the horizon as must a recognition we must do more to get groups such as carers and those with physical disabilities into work and that requires all sectors to look at how they operate.
We also need to redouble our efforts to mitigate long term sickness impact - there is ill health which is a barrier to work and ill health which isn’t.
There’s also another term not used much these days - education. Training and improving the skills of existing workers seems an obvious step.
If we are determined to wean ourselves off using cheap imported labour (as distinct from skilled imported labour), we need to rethink on getting our economically inactive back into some form of productive employment and that requires much more carrot than stick.
How?
Don't tax poor people close to 100% if they work more than 18-20 hours per week.
Get people to work full time rather than part time, and able to keep more of their money they earn.
The state gets more in taxes and pays less in benefits, even if it doesn't get 100% of the effort people put in.
Laffer Curve in action. And the right thing to do.
I assume you will vote for Farage again then given he has said he will raise the threshold for the basic rate of income tax to £20000?
You assume wrong. The threshold isn't the issue, its the taper that's the issue.
Besides, the threshold should be around £20000 by 2034 anyway, its not that impressive a policy.
So basically you want taxpayers to keep funding benefits even when workers are earning not just £20000 but significantly above that too
I want to eliminate the concept of income-related benefits altogether and merge benefits and tax into a single system with a single threshold and single tax rate, as recommended by Milton Friedman.
Which still involves the question of where you set the threshold
That's a question for political debate but tangential to the point. The key point is the singular rate.
Currently many people on the same income can be on wildly different real tax rates.
Everyone on the same income should be on the same real tax rate.
See the civil rights precedents in using the National Guard to backup/protect Federal agents.
Precedents like Little Rock were permitted by laws.
What Trump is doing is not.
But its the law, not the constitution, that is in play AFAIK.
The law in question sets constraints on the executive.
Ignoring it is both to breach the specific law (the Posse Comitatus Act), and to breach the constitutional constraints on the executive, which require it to obey the law.
See the civil rights precedents in using the National Guard to backup/protect Federal agents.
Precedents like Little Rock were permitted by laws.
What Trump is doing is not.
But its the law, not the constitution, that is in play AFAIK.
The law in question sets constraints on the executive.
Ignoring it is both to breach the specific law (the Posse Comitatus Act), and to breach the constitutional constraints on the executive, which require it to obey the law.
Its breaching the law, yes.
Unconstitutional tends to mean breaching constitutional limits, which do not apply here.
Otherwise every single breach of the law is unconstitutional and the word loses all meaning.
There's a natural space here for the Conservatives to grab the mantle of fiscal responsibility from Reform and Labour, as Matthew Parris wrote over the weekend. However, Kemi seems more interested in picking (and losing) peripheral fights on free speech and culture.
If they don't, then the Liberal Democrats in theory could move into this space - but that'd require them to drop much of the social democrat bit, and given the party is built on beards and sandals that might be a stretch.
Its easier to advocate fiscal responsibility in theory than when it requires advocating actual policies.
To advocate fiscal responsibility requires advocating the end of the triple lock, winter fuel allowance and pension credits.
Plus an increase in the state retirement age to 70 and the ending of DB pensions in the public sector.
It also requires advocating the reform and increase of council tax, especially for the more expensive properties.
And freezing hospital spending and redirecting to public health and primary care. Effectively a brutal assault on the Conservative's only remaining voter cohort.
That's far too crude imo. Hospitals are heavily involved in preventative and public health work.
And a shift to prevention / public health has been the direction for decades.
Yes, you're right about some hospital work being in that area - but there is serious definition creep when it comes to preventative policy. Preventing someone's Type 2 diabetes from killing them is sometimes called secondary or tertiary prevention.
What you want is primary prevention - an environment where people's diets and lifestyle don't lead to it in the first place. Otherwise, NHS spending will continue to explode.
(I'm not convinced that public health has been increasing as a proportion of spending. My understanding was it's been cut significantly - I'll check later once I've sorted my emails out)
The best primary prevention, I'll naturally argue, in England is opening up and maintaining the public footpath network (and the other non-PROW footpath networks) to the extent that they become available and practical for local journeys.
The average is that in England we have 2-3 miles of recognised Public Footpaths, Bridleways etc per square mile of country. And at least another mile which is not recognised.
One that I want numbers on is the effect of 1-3 million more dog owners since COVID on public health, Fido demands walkies, which means that 1-3 million more people have to walk every day. Sedentary people can be identified by their cat.
That's such a massive generalisation. We have two cats, are both of us are (ahem) somewhat active, and far from sedentary...
I'd also query the assumption that those people who got dogs during Covid are giving them anywhere near enough exercise.
Feline paralysis is a well-known affliction. I had the issue yesterday when one of our cats, for the first time, deigned to allow me to act as its chair. Fortunately I was at my PC at the time, so I could still get some stuff done whilst the cat dozed.
If you ignore it it sits on your keyboard.
Then if you still ignore it it is sick in your keyboard.
See the civil rights precedents in using the National Guard to backup/protect Federal agents.
To federalise the national guard, against the wishes of the state governor, at an absolute minimum the executive must invoke the Insurrection Act (whether or not that is justified would be a matter for the courts). Trump has not done so.
Using federal troops in this manner is blatantly unconstitutional.
The federal judge Newsom applied to refused to pass an injunction against the ongoing use of federal law enforcement pending a further hearing later so there doesn't appear to be a clear violation here according to the court or they'd have acted to injunct pending hearing
I don't think you can go that far - aiui an immediate temporary injunction (whilst the Judge assesses the case) is a higher test than the final decision around immediate irreversible harm, so I don't think you can use that logic for the overall decision.
Given that the National Guard and Marines are not engaged in full-on enforcement yet (aiui), that gives time for several days of consideration without a clear need for an immediate temporary ruling, before the Judge makes a permanent ruling.
Interesting one too. Stroud not a particularly strong Reform area so we will see if their surge has carried here. Labour defence as it was the second place Councillor from 2024 in the ward but Tories 'defending' highest vote share from 2024. Greens quite strong locally too. I'd guess Reform gain on high 20s percent from a very tight Tory/Labour second place race on low 20s. Result might be close to national polling
Some interesting ones tomorrow as well. In Leeds there is a MBI defence, in Mid Suffolk a Green defence, in North Northamptonshire a double Con defence, and in Nottinghamshire a double election for both a Con and a Lab defence.
Comments
A restriction in the supply of labour and the development of AI could lead to a massive shift to more physical jobs. My prediction is much more cultural/fun stuff, a shift to a four day week to allow people to do more fun stuff, and larger proportions working in health, sport, construction and so on - stuff that can't be automated in the same way.
I think Greggs will be a vending machine within the decade and we'll all be submitting blood samples to a machine every 6 months for automatic AI-based early diagnoses. Exciting!
When that came up, I printed out that I had taken part, as a volunteer, in the cataloging of the basement contents of smaller museum.
When I suggested that instead of spend (probably) hundreds of millions on a project to catalogue the British Museum, that letting lose some people doing Masters and PhDs in the various areas, there was considerable derision, here.
“But it’s not a Proper Project”
Instead of a single, giant, perfect solution at a single point in time. A slower accretion of records. A relative is doing something like this with another domain - turning unread historical documents into a database, using an iPhone, OCR and some time.
Meanwhile the British museum hasn’t started working on a full catalogue.
We need to make most people better off, and then you can tax everyone more to pay for the things that need paying for. This is why I've spent years talking about rentier capitalism in Britain, that makes most people poorer. If you could tackle that then you don't have to rely on a tiny percentage of the population paying for everything.
I did use to think that increasing the personal allowance so that someone on minimum wage didn't pay any tax was the right approach (I wrote a letter saying so to Brief when he was Chancellor) but I now think that is wrong.
Someone on minimum wage should be able to afford an adequate standard of living and also make a tax contribution. They can't at the moment mainly because the cost of living is way too high.
Although Starmer et al. know this, they are too craven in the face of public opinion to lead the debate; hence thus far their redistributive leanings have been far too tentative.
Xiaomi SU7 Ultra just posted a 7:04 at the Nordschleife. I expected it to be fast, but still amazed at the laptime.
Some notable times for comparison
- Porsche 911 GT3 (992.1): 7:04.511
- Rimac Nevera: 7:05.298
- Porsche Taycan Turbo GT: 7:07.55
- Model S Plaid: 7:25.231
https://x.com/yilunzh/status/1932636235102642265
Very good, TSE!
Some people only work part time as they don't want to work for no extra income.
Not much you can do about the former, there's a lot we can do about the latter.
Besides, the threshold should be around £20000 by 2034 anyway, its not that impressive a policy.
Stephen Miller says they should all be deported.
Those who say (X) should be deported:
Those who have committed violent crimes: 87%
Those who have committed non-violent crimes: 47%
Those who have young children who are US citizens: 26%
Those who have lived in the US without committing crimes: 24%
Those who came to the US as children: 22%
Those who are married to a US citizen: 17%
YouGov / June 9, 2025
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1932460129250619888
There are millions of construction workers in this country, and tens of millions of workers in this country, many of whom could with minimal training be construction workers.
Importing more people does not solve labour shortages for the same reason it does not create unemployment. Because lump of labour is a fallacy.
Import more people to construct homes and you need to build even more homes, because you've imported more people. Supply and demand go up in tandem. Ditto with other sectors of the economy.
The UK government is spending £44k per household. The one segment of the wealthy who are not being taxed heavily are the rich retired - those on large pensions who currently pay much lower income taxes than the rest of us whilst benefiting from the government’s largesse. Unfortunately, as we’ve just seen with the WFA (& also the WASPI campaign, which although ultimately ineffective captured a large chunk of the political establishment), raising taxes on this group is becoming increasing difficult.
The problem the UK faces is that money is going to an ever increasing population of elderly retired (in NHS & pension spending) combined with lethargic GDP growth. Past governments crossed their fingers that GDP growth would cover the demographic issues that everyone could see looming over the future of the UK. Unfortunately from 2010 we didn’t get that GDP growth (for reasons that are contested but are at least partially because UK.gov cut infrastructure investment to the bone) & now the future is here: we have the larger & ever growing elderly population & we don’t have the GDP to pay for it without it hurting somewhere.
Was my daughters birthday last week. We gave her a cake and let her eat it. We didn't give her a choice of having it or eating it.
Who knew there was such variety, or are they just high-margin? PB - welcome to your future.
It's also simply the case that older people are more risk averse. With much more of the nation's wealth held by the older generation, the economy has stagnated.
Not sure how Putin hides that any longer.
Russia isn't a country in the western sense, its a Muscovite Empire. So long as Muscovites have food and shelter and are reasonably content, Putin is sadly reasonably secure. Its not their sons dying.
Then you get all the useful idiots who go to Moscow and say "Russia isn't hurting".
Why would you do it to yourself?
Could explain Elon's irrational mood swings.
Sanctions failed to cut off Russian fossil fuel income and failed to prevent Russia buying western components.
And if one politician doesn't, the next will happily take his voters by doing so.
Don't think of it as a conscious choice, think of it as a dangerous national addiction.
Have the sanctions been perfect? No. Does that mean they're worthless? Again, no.
Have a £30k income from letting out properties? Get taxed 20%
Have a £30k income from a graduate job? Get taxed 20+8+9 = 37%
If you're claiming benefits there's a further 55% on top.
Which will piss off the senior officers who have been extracting those sign-on bonuses from the mugs who signed up.
Jenrick is the next break everyone's hearts anti hero
Support for a large increase in house building in Britons' local area falls to 42%, the lowest level since November 2021 and joint-lowest since YouGov began asking this question in 2019
Support: 42% (-3 from 10-12 May)
Oppose: 47% (=)"
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1932729944380989577
We just need to keep oiling the meat grinder.
It's all conditioned across society by a much greater understanding of what tax means, and what the quid pro quo is.
Unless we change that, we'll never get either middling, or high, earners to pay more.
As so often happens, a lot of it all depends on a less arrogant attitude to watching the rest of Western Eurioe, which is the opposite direction of where we've been heading recently.
(A whole back I read that this is standard for Russian 'negotiations', going back to Stalin's time. Go to the table with what you demand, and don't budge. Let everyone else move to your position.
Sanctions on Russia have not been as effective as hoped, and Russia's ability to manufacture war material continues to expand.
It’s the same internal logic that drove the Germans to attack France & Poland in 1939: Their economy was on the brink of collapsing internally & only by capturing the economic output of neighbouring countries could the regime hope to survive, having spent every available resource on re-armament.
Already two weeks ago...
“I’ll let you know in 2 weeks whether Putin is playing us. If so, we’ll respond differently.”
Trump says his envoy is doing “phenomenal work” with Russia, but no deal is signed yet. He’s also “very disappointed” by mass strikes on Ukraine...
https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1927778130757931090
And consider also that these two million men are those of the generation who would ordinarily a) work, b) procreate, and c) consume.
It is hard to see how Russia is not in all sorts of trouble.
The replacements
- RCH155 (a gun Mission Module strapped to a Boxer Drive Module. The Boxer is modularised, coming in two pieces, like Thunderbird 2)
- Archer (a big lorry with a big gun on the back. It looks as daft as you think but it works)
Links:There's a massive amount of complacency and denial in Europe about our vulnerability.
So sending all the AS90s now makes very good sense, with little downside.
We’re probably short on tank & IFV production though.
https://andrewspreviews.substack.com/p/previewing-the-severn-ward-stroud
I was listening to a great podcast which, in summary, showed that wherever good records are kept they show big bounces in births after wars going back centuries.
There were many reasons - survivors coming back and sleeping with anyone that moves to celebrate or forget, couples realising how precious life is so banging out giant families etc. effectively the numbers killed is usually less than the numbers born and the population curve deviates upwards from the previous pattern.
Re the generation consuming, noting how the Russians use the poor to fill the army (not unusual in general armies but noticeably so in Russia) you aren’t losing the middle classes from wealthier regions and cities so not the biggest consumers.
The ones you really want dying to damage Russia aren’t the ones who are dying but the ones at the top but there you go.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — National Guard troops are now protecting ICE agents as they make arrests in LA.
https://x.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1932587233556484522
So the news that Ukraine hit the largest Russian gunpowder factory last night is good news, but the news that the North Koreans are going to start producing Shahed drones for Russia is bad.
To also balance out my doom on the war front this morning, the Ukrainians have had some encouraging aviation success recently - the first Russian jet shot down by an F-16, and they've been hitting more ground targets with their own air force too.
I'd guess Reform gain on high 20s percent from a very tight Tory/Labour second place race on low 20s.
Result might be close to national polling
https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/norway_quietly_doubles_its_f_16_fighter_jet_donation_to_ukraine-14813.html
See the civil rights precedents in using the National Guard to backup/protect Federal agents.
I expect to see older people dancing at raves, in their incontinence pads, next.
Nothing, as far as I know, in the constitution prevents the military from being used to assist with law enforcement. For a long time in the Reconstruction Era they were, and there are times where the law permits it today.
What makes it illegal is the Posse Comitatus Act, which ironically was not passed as a piece of liberal protection of civil liberties, but was instead a "States Rights" anti-Reconstruction anti-Federal Government legislation to enable racial segregation and oppression without Federal oversight.
Trump is flagrantly breaking that federal law, not the constitution.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/cgkg6l182dpt#Scorecard
Personally I would make sides bowl the 90 overs unless there is bad light/weather issues, no matter how long it takes.
There's no reason for Tests to start so late in the day. Why not start at 10am and end at the same time as now, or earlier if and only if the 90 overs are done?
Must admit, as a cricket-watcher my loyalties are conflicted. Normally it's ABA; Anyone But Australia but I'm not really pro the Saffirs, either.
There's a lot of behind-the-curve information out there, even amongst now-armchair Generals.
Trump has not done so.
Using federal troops in this manner is blatantly unconstitutional.
Though I'm equally glad my wife had the conversation with my daughter lately to prepare her for concepts like that and that I didn't have to be the one to do so.
What Trump is doing is not.
But its the law, not the constitution, that is in play AFAIK.
Currently many people on the same income can be on wildly different real tax rates.
Everyone on the same income should be on the same real tax rate.
Ignoring it is both to breach the specific law (the Posse Comitatus Act), and to breach the constitutional constraints on the executive, which require it to obey the law.
Unconstitutional tends to mean breaching constitutional limits, which do not apply here.
Otherwise every single breach of the law is unconstitutional and the word loses all meaning.
Then if you still ignore it it is sick in your keyboard.
Wonder how much we are paying Mauritius for this?
Given that the National Guard and Marines are not engaged in full-on enforcement yet (aiui), that gives time for several days of consideration without a clear need for an immediate temporary ruling, before the Judge makes a permanent ruling.
Then it goes into Appeals to higher courts.