I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Itauma is the great, er, white hope coming up from the amateurs (24-0-0, 12KO) while Whyte is the old war horse with a dodgy chin (or rather, a dodgy habit of getting sparked out via upper cut).
And yes he is looking good since he turned professional (12-0-0, 10KO) However, if you look at Itauma's pro record there is nothing to see. Most of the people he has fought have been journeymen or people who have been minding their own business on a Thursday and been phoned up and asked to appear at York Hall on the Friday to fight Itauma.
This is not to say that Itauma isn't super easy on the eye. He can bang and he is a boxer (cf AJ). But he hasn't faced anyone who can give him a proper run for his money and Whyte might just be that person. Although old(er), he is or can be a formidable opponent and I don't think Itauma will have faced anything like Whyte's resilience (as long as he avoids the upper cuts) or competence.
Now, much of this is well known but on bf Itauma is 1.14 while Whyte is 9.2 with the draw at 32. Both the latter are worth a pound or two of anyone's money.
You say that. I gave up on Unibet, even after three rival books gave up on me (humblebrag!). Perhaps things have changed since but Unibet's website was just far too painful to use.
Itauma is the great, er, white hope coming up from the amateurs (24-0-0, 12KO) while Whyte is the old war horse with a dodgy chin (or rather, a dodgy habit of getting sparked out via upper cut).
And yes he is looking good since he turned professional (12-0-0, 10KO) However, if you look at Itauma's pro record there is nothing to see. Most of the people he has fought have been journeymen or people who have been minding their own business on a Thursday and been phoned up and asked to appear at York Hall on the Friday to fight Itauma.
This is not to say that Itauma isn't super easy on the eye. He can bang and he is a boxer (cf AJ). But he hasn't faced anyone who can give him a proper run for his money and Whyte might just be that person. Although old(er), he is or can be a formidable opponent and I don't think Itauma will have faced anything like Whyte's resilience (as long as he avoids the upper cuts) or competence.
Now, much of this is well known but on bf Itauma is 1.14 while Whyte is 9.2 with the draw at 32. Both the latter are worth a pound or two of anyone's money.
You say that. I gave up on Unibet, even after three rival books gave up on me (humblebrag!). Perhaps things have changed since but Unibet's website was just far too painful to use.
I have to say I really just only use bf exchange.
Apart from a shocker on the Stewards Cup on Saturday they are usually as good as anyone and better than the normal odds anywhere.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
I've not been watching the school closures saga but my impression is it is mainly prep schools rather than senior schools which probably reflects demographics as much as everything else, as state primary schools also face closure owing to not enough nookie during the Tory years, along with the realisation that it is mainly the very posh public schools that start at 13 anyway. Most start at 11.
@BarackObama · 37m We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy.
... because the Democrats have never, ever tried to gerrymander of course. Oh no.
Non-political districting is the only sensible way forward, but weirdly Democrats seem about as reluctant as Republicans to implement it.
We can be extremely grateful that that kind of gerrymandering doesn't happen in this country (except for the LibDems and the Western Isles constituency of course, which they have since lost anyway).
The boundary commission takes these decisions under strong scrutiny from all parties, so no idea what you are insinuating re: "Western Islands", which the Lib Dems have never held. Sounds like ignorant abuse rather than any informed comment.
Uniquely, what you say about boundaries is not true in the case of the Western Isles - the Boundary Commission cannot amalgamate the boundaries of that constituency, unlike every other constituency in the country. Clegg insisted on including that in the 2011 Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act that as the Lib Dems had traditionally been popular there, and Cameron understandably agreed to get the Act through. It has 21k electors compared with more than three times that for the average UK constituency.
In fact, of course, they did disastrously in the subsequent election, and have never recovered. So his gerrymandering didn't help his party. And it should certainly be removed, like the other constitutional abortion that Lib Dem rigging, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, has been.
So I'm afraid the ignorance comes from you.
Is that the first time ever that a post has been comprehensively debunked on a thread before it's even been posted?
In the unlikely event that Fishing ever gets beyond John O'Groats, I'd recommend if he wants to ingratiate himself with the locals to loudly declaim 'You're pretty much the same as the Western Isles aren't you' as he gets off the ferry.
To return to the US the issue over Texas is not so much the gerrymandering although this is a utterly blatant case but that it is being done mid-term and not at the ten year mark (when new census data about population comes in). iirc mid-term has never been done before except once (in Texas). There's certainly gerrymandering at the ten year point but as commentators have pointed out at least there's some attempt to justify around census date.
In this new case Trump literally phoned Abbot and said - get me five more seats.
"However, police said misinformation had been spread online that one of the men - and the woman - were Somali migrants, which the English Defence League (EDL) founder, Tommy Robinson, similarly claimed."
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
Itauma is the great, er, white hope coming up from the amateurs (24-0-0, 12KO) while Whyte is the old war horse with a dodgy chin (or rather, a dodgy habit of getting sparked out via upper cut).
And yes he is looking good since he turned professional (12-0-0, 10KO) However, if you look at Itauma's pro record there is nothing to see. Most of the people he has fought have been journeymen or people who have been minding their own business on a Thursday and been phoned up and asked to appear at York Hall on the Friday to fight Itauma.
This is not to say that Itauma isn't super easy on the eye. He can bang and he is a boxer (cf AJ). But he hasn't faced anyone who can give him a proper run for his money and Whyte might just be that person. Although old(er), he is or can be a formidable opponent and I don't think Itauma will have faced anything like Whyte's resilience (as long as he avoids the upper cuts) or competence.
Now, much of this is well known but on bf Itauma is 1.14 while Whyte is 9.2 with the draw at 32. Both the latter are worth a pound or two of anyone's money.
You say that. I gave up on Unibet, even after three rival books gave up on me (humblebrag!). Perhaps things have changed since but Unibet's website was just far too painful to use.
I have to say I really just only use bf exchange.
Apart from a shocker on the Stewards Cup on Saturday they are usually as good as anyone and better than the normal odds anywhere.
For outsiders, bookmakers' early prices can be better than the exchange. The firms sacked their odds-compilers when copying Betfair prices was more accurate but betting markets are dead now right up till a couple of minutes before the off. Most of the big punters have been forced onto the grey market. And the books can no longer compile their own prices.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
"However, police said misinformation had been spread online that one of the men - and the woman - were Somali migrants, which the English Defence League (EDL) founder, Tommy Robinson, similarly claimed."
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
I've not been watching the school closures saga but my impression is it is mainly prep schools rather than senior schools which probably reflects demographics as much as everything else, as state primary schools also face closure owing to not enough nookie during the Tory years, along with the realisation that it is mainly the very posh public schools that start at 13 anyway. Most start at 11.
They are more vulnerable as they tend to be smaller and therefore the fixed cost to income share is much tighter. But there have been quite a number of secondary schools including some old and prestigious ones going down as well. Bedstone and St Margaret's spring to mind.
THere is a list here, but it may not be complete and it blames all the closures on VAT which probably isn't correct (Bedstone, for example, was in trouble anyway).
@BarackObama · 37m We can’t lose focus on what matters – right now, Republicans in Texas are trying to gerrymander district lines to unfairly win five seats in next year’s midterm elections. This is a power grab that undermines our democracy.
... because the Democrats have never, ever tried to gerrymander of course. Oh no.
Non-political districting is the only sensible way forward, but weirdly Democrats seem about as reluctant as Republicans to implement it.
We can be extremely grateful that that kind of gerrymandering doesn't happen in this country (except for the LibDems and the Western Isles constituency of course, which they have since lost anyway).
The boundary commission takes these decisions under strong scrutiny from all parties, so no idea what you are insinuating re: "Western Islands", which the Lib Dems have never held. Sounds like ignorant abuse rather than any informed comment.
Uniquely, what you say about boundaries is not true in the case of the Western Isles - the Boundary Commission cannot amalgamate the boundaries of that constituency, unlike every other constituency in the country. Clegg insisted on including that in the 2011 Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act that as the Lib Dems had traditionally been popular there, and Cameron understandably agreed to get the Act through. It has 21k electors compared with more than three times that for the average UK constituency.
In fact, of course, they did disastrously in the subsequent election, and have never recovered. So his gerrymandering didn't help his party. And it should certainly be removed, like the other constitutional abortion that Lib Dem rigging, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, has been.
So I'm afraid the ignorance comes from you.
Is that the first time ever that a post has been comprehensively debunked on a thread before it's even been posted?
In the unlikely event that Fishing ever gets beyond John O'Groats, I'd recommend if he wants to ingratiate himself with the locals to loudly declaim 'You're pretty much the same as the Western Isles aren't you' as he gets off the ferry.
And when he gets off the ferry from Kirkwall to Lerwick he can remind the Shetlanders that they’re just the same as the Orcadians.
"However, police said misinformation had been spread online that one of the men - and the woman - were Somali migrants, which the English Defence League (EDL) founder, Tommy Robinson, similarly claimed."
Needless to say, the convicted man was far from being Somali. And had a history of violence.
Ironically, one reason advanced for wanting more information from the police is to counter online rumours that every attacker is an asylum seeker. Yvette Cooper spoke about this. I believe she is married to Ed Balls who can perhaps use his Labour Party contacts to pass on Yvette's concerns to the Home Secretary.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
Didn't Boris cut off Imperial's work on mRNA vaccines during the pandemic, in favour of Oxford's classical approach?
No - both were funded. The classical approach got the bulk of the funding and biggest push. Because mRNA was being very actively developed by other organisations that had the best facilities for that. The “Oxford” vaccine was the alternative, if the mRNA approach didn’t work or was less effective.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Mt St Marys and Barlborough Hall going near where I used to live (NE Derbs) was a bit of a surprise. But the grounds and buildings must have needed a fortune in maintenance. All the local athletics and running clubs use the track there, not sure what'll happen to it.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Yes, what a terrible decision to be faced with. Talk about the buck stopping. Right or wrong? Not a very interesting question really. It was done, it was an atrocity, it worked on its own terms.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
Indeed. Alas the Edinburgh supercompuiter story isn't an edifying one as regards the current lot.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
This is what the tories and Fukkers would love them to do, obviously, but do you think they would be richly rewarded by the voters for breaking pre-election commitments to raise taxes?
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
Indeed. Alas the Edinburgh supercompuiter story isn't an edifying one as regards the current lot.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
Didn't Boris cut off Imperial's work on mRNA vaccines during the pandemic, in favour of Oxford's classical approach?
We went with what could be delivered the quickest, which was probably sensible.
German's Biontech is co-developing some of the vaccines with Pfizer (and has others of its own). Those will probably continue. Moderna is a bit more shaky.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
The problem is the attitude of the permanent structure of government. Who regarded many of the successes of pandemic as threats to their ordered world.
For example, the dashboard team was disbanded and got rid of, the moment the idea was mooted (by the previous government) of doing the same thing across government data. Control of the truth is important to controlling policy.
The testing lab learnings were got rid of - faster, more automated, cheaper testing not wanted here, thank you.
A friend who was involved in getting one of the Nightingale hospitals constructed on schedule was told, when she was pushed out of her job, that her success was embarrassing for the department.
And so on.
This process resembled the way in which, after WWII, large numbers of things that were embarrassingly successful were shut down and got rid of. See RV Jews and scientific intelligence.
How many rock bands were / are named after features of WW2. It seems to be what I might call a 1970s Crass thing.
I have:
Joy Division - forced camp brothels at Auschwitz etc. Choosing both names are very male things to do imo. Spandau Ballet - disputed, but allegedly the "death dance" done by a person being hanged, or shot with a machine gun.
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was named for a special collar the SS would put on killer hounds that made them go bonzo and poo on ghetto-dwellers
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Mt St Marys and Barlborough Hall going near where I used to live (NE Derbs) was a bit of a surprise. But the grounds and buildings must have needed a fortune in maintenance. All the local athletics and running clubs use the track there, not sure what'll happen to it.
That's potentially a Building of Community Value ?
(Scheme set up I think in the noughties, with some sort of right to pause whilst they try and raise money.)
The rub may be what happens in the case of a partial purchase.
OTOH it could go partly for housing with the sports area as Section 106.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
You will appreciate today’s Matt cartoon.
Striven, surely? Shocking standards ...
Yes, it makes me wince too, but I think both are actually accepted as correct usage now.
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
I thought the theory that it was at Stalin's request had been debunked (the version I heard was that the destruction of Dresden was Stalin's price for entering the war against Japan). Yes it was aimed at softening defences on the Eastern front, but part of normal strategic planning. The Soviet Union was our ally and operations intended to help it were routine
Yes, what a terrible decision to be faced with. Talk about the buck stopping. Right or wrong? Not a very interesting question really. It was done, it was an atrocity, it worked on its own terms.
Actually I have to disagree. Extremely interesting question. Not least for moral philosophers. Truman took a utilitarian view I guess, saving 100s thousands or more as TSE says in exchange for 10s thousands. Plus many of the first group would be his own countrymen.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Some interesting stats in there. Figure 6 suggests that the pre-VAT trend was for the number of pupils in private schools to increase.
The situation appears to be that VAT is having minimal effect on numbers of private pupils. It must have some effect at the margins, I guess.
The Times ran a headline a couple of days ago of X private schools closing since VAT, omitting that the number of closures was average for recent years and actually more new schools were opened than old ones closed.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The ghost of Theresa May's 2017 campaign would beg to differ.
The problem with Theresa May's 2017 campaign was not social care but that Lynton Crosby had apparently not been told there was a new leader so crafted the campaign for David Cameron – confident in front of crowds and the camera, with no support from a sidelined Cabinet.
What killed the Conservative majority in 2017 was the two terrorist outrages during the campaign itself, alongside insistence that Tory police cuts had made no difference. Suddenly Labour was the party of Law and Order.
And parroting Crosby's slogan ‘strong and stable’ does not work when you are neither.
It was social care, I canvassed Tory leaners in Ilford North who said they were now going Labour the week after May announced the dementia tax as she would take their house.
Police canvassed were not happy about cuts either true
It is not the police themselves but voters' reaction to Tory denial that cutting thousands of police made a difference to combating terrorism. It might even have been strictly defensible as a debating point but was politically tone deaf.
Social care played a part, obviously. Everything played a part. But it was the public's visceral reaction to piles of dead children at the Ariana Grande concert a few days later that was decisive.
My memory was that it less the dementia tax itself but the u-turn mess in particular the "nothing has changed" whine that was greeted with universal derision.
More the general campaign (I was one of the ones speaking up for May's Social Care plan on here). It was commented here by the usual suspects that the Manchester Arena bombing would destroy Corbyn because of his links to Palestine etc. In the event the reaction was if anything against the Tories. Overall the Tories ran a very poor campaign and Corbyn had the zeitgeist, aided too by the Remain voting public not wanting to give the Tories carte blanche over Brexit.
I note too that voters don't like unnecessary elections at short notice, as Sunak found out too. One reason amongst several that Labour will go the full term to 2029.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Some interesting stats in there. Figure 6 suggests that the pre-VAT trend was for the number of pupils in private schools to increase.
The situation appears to be that VAT is having minimal effect on numbers of private pupils. It must have some effect at the margins, I guess.
The Times ran a headline a couple of days ago of X private schools closing since VAT, omitting that the number of closures was average for recent years and actually more new schools were opened than old ones closed.
It will take maybe 2-3 years for the full effect to be known, for the simple reason you don't move somebody in the middle of a key stage unless you have to. The right time to switch is at the end of it.
But it's highly unlikely it will have no effect at all.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
How many rock bands were / are named after features of WW2. It seems to be what I might call a 1970s Crass thing.
I have:
Joy Division - forced camp brothels at Auschwitz etc. Choosing both names are very male things to do imo. Spandau Ballet - disputed, but allegedly the "death dance" done by a person being hanged, or shot with a machine gun.
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was named for a special collar the SS would put on killer hounds that made them go bonzo and poo on ghetto-dwellers
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
That leads too readily to a dismissal of the impact of VAT.
A price shock of 20% on fees, plus employer's NI rising to 15%, and making the schools fully taxable businesses, will push up costs by 25%+ and that will freeze out many parents in an environment where real wages aren't increasing.
It will close some schools, and make others more socially exclusive.
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
I thought the theory that it was at Stalin's request had been debunked (the version I heard was that the destruction of Dresden was Stalin's price for entering the war against Japan). Yes it was aimed at softening defences on the Eastern front, but part of normal strategic planning. The Soviet Union was our ally and operations intended to help it were routine
It is interesting that the Soviets never developed a serious strategic bomber campaign. I am sure that in large part they were happy for the British and US to do that. They concentrated on light bombers and ground attack.
One benefit of the strategic bombing campaign was to divert German arms production of both artillery and aircraft to anti-aircraft and interceptors, as well as tying up huge manpower. It took the pressure off them for air superiority, and off our forces too once the second fronts started.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
I've not been watching the school closures saga but my impression is it is mainly prep schools rather than senior schools which probably reflects demographics as much as everything else, as state primary schools also face closure owing to not enough nookie during the Tory years, along with the realisation that it is mainly the very posh public schools that start at 13 anyway. Most start at 11.
There is that. The very posh public schools are almost totally unaffordable now, except for the super wealthy.
Most need £50-60k per year, with VAT, and very very few can afford that.
By contrast, there are still many prep schools charging £5k per term plus VAT, so just south of £20k a year, and two professional parents with one child could still choose to do that.
"However, police said misinformation had been spread online that one of the men - and the woman - were Somali migrants, which the English Defence League (EDL) founder, Tommy Robinson, similarly claimed."
Needless to say, the convicted man was far from being Somali. And had a history of violence.
That's what Lee Anderson did concerning the arrest of a man suspected of rape, which was worked up into the Ashfield demonstration.
He made the "asylum seeker" claim when there was no such official statement made by any body.
I still have not been able to discover whether Anderson's claim is true or not.
It is no clear to me whether the Yvette Cooper suggestion that ethnicity information of suspects be releasable by police if they judge will help. Anderson, GB News etc are already running entirely dishonest demonisation campaigns aganikst Muslims and immigrants, and I think they will just pivot to a different pressure point.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Some interesting stats in there. Figure 6 suggests that the pre-VAT trend was for the number of pupils in private schools to increase.
The situation appears to be that VAT is having minimal effect on numbers of private pupils. It must have some effect at the margins, I guess.
The Times ran a headline a couple of days ago of X private schools closing since VAT, omitting that the number of closures was average for recent years and actually more new schools were opened than old ones closed.
Private schooling is almost an article of faith for some and not every child benefits. Know your children before you spend your cash.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
I've not been watching the school closures saga but my impression is it is mainly prep schools rather than senior schools which probably reflects demographics as much as everything else, as state primary schools also face closure owing to not enough nookie during the Tory years, along with the realisation that it is mainly the very posh public schools that start at 13 anyway. Most start at 11.
They are more vulnerable as they tend to be smaller and therefore the fixed cost to income share is much tighter. But there have been quite a number of secondary schools including some old and prestigious ones going down as well. Bedstone and St Margaret's spring to mind.
THere is a list here, but it may not be complete and it blames all the closures on VAT which probably isn't correct (Bedstone, for example, was in trouble anyway).
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
Indeed. Alas the Edinburgh supercompuiter story isn't an edifying one as regards the current lot.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Mt St Marys and Barlborough Hall going near where I used to live (NE Derbs) was a bit of a surprise. But the grounds and buildings must have needed a fortune in maintenance. All the local athletics and running clubs use the track there, not sure what'll happen to it.
Private conference/wedding venue or sold off for housing.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
The problem is the attitude of the permanent structure of government. Who regarded many of the successes of pandemic as threats to their ordered world.
For example, the dashboard team was disbanded and got rid of, the moment the idea was mooted (by the previous government) of doing the same thing across government data. Control of the truth is important to controlling policy.
The testing lab learnings were got rid of - faster, more automated, cheaper testing not wanted here, thank you.
A friend who was involved in getting one of the Nightingale hospitals constructed on schedule was told, when she was pushed out of her job, that her success was embarrassing for the department.
And so on.
This process resembled the way in which, after WWII, large numbers of things that were embarrassingly successful were shut down and got rid of. See RV Jews and scientific intelligence.
The trouble with #ClassicDom's plans to ignore data protection and collate all statistics into a central location, is that it starts with monitoring the pandemic but leads quickly to emailing the Taliban a hitlist of Afghans who'd helped us because a dataset compiled for one reason gets used for something completely different by people unaware of its origins or sensitivity.
HMG makes the same mistake with health data. Bundle it up and sell it to American Big Pharma. What could go wrong? Or burning everyone's tax status onto a couple of CDs and losing them.
But yes, on your wider point, cutting programmes that work is as ingrained and as stupid.
ETA as an aside, my job with a global megacorp included building dashboards and charts for private and public sector customers. It was very rare they showed any interest after the first couple of weeks. Once they've scratched their itch and solved the problem, they move straight on to the next project.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Some interesting stats in there. Figure 6 suggests that the pre-VAT trend was for the number of pupils in private schools to increase.
The situation appears to be that VAT is having minimal effect on numbers of private pupils. It must have some effect at the margins, I guess.
The Times ran a headline a couple of days ago of X private schools closing since VAT, omitting that the number of closures was average for recent years and actually more new schools were opened than old ones closed.
It will take maybe 2-3 years for the full effect to be known, for the simple reason you don't move somebody in the middle of a key stage unless you have to. The right time to switch is at the end of it.
But it's highly unlikely it will have no effect at all.
How much free publicity have private schools had over the last few years because of VAT?
Add in the rich still getting richer far faster than the country does, the shift from meritocracy to kleptocracy and lots of new rich immigrants from Hong Kong and a wash in demand seems perfectly plausible.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
I've not been watching the school closures saga but my impression is it is mainly prep schools rather than senior schools which probably reflects demographics as much as everything else, as state primary schools also face closure owing to not enough nookie during the Tory years, along with the realisation that it is mainly the very posh public schools that start at 13 anyway. Most start at 11.
They are more vulnerable as they tend to be smaller and therefore the fixed cost to income share is much tighter. But there have been quite a number of secondary schools including some old and prestigious ones going down as well. Bedstone and St Margaret's spring to mind.
THere is a list here, but it may not be complete and it blames all the closures on VAT which probably isn't correct (Bedstone, for example, was in trouble anyway).
The VAT change gives them an easy and believable excuse, no matter what the underlying state of their finances and what trouble they were in beforehand.
The FT has the details of the Anglo-French migrants deal. As in, the actual wording
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
How many rock bands were / are named after features of WW2. It seems to be what I might call a 1970s Crass thing.
I have:
Joy Division - forced camp brothels at Auschwitz etc. Choosing both names are very male things to do imo. Spandau Ballet - disputed, but allegedly the "death dance" done by a person being hanged, or shot with a machine gun.
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was named for a special collar the SS would put on killer hounds that made them go bonzo and poo on ghetto-dwellers
Can't believe you missed Earth Wind and Fire, which clearly pays homage to nazi paganism.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Some interesting stats in there. Figure 6 suggests that the pre-VAT trend was for the number of pupils in private schools to increase.
The situation appears to be that VAT is having minimal effect on numbers of private pupils. It must have some effect at the margins, I guess.
The Times ran a headline a couple of days ago of X private schools closing since VAT, omitting that the number of closures was average for recent years and actually more new schools were opened than old ones closed.
Private schooling is almost an article of faith for some and not every child benefits. Know your children before you spend your cash.
Private education has extended beyond schools. Now concerned parents can pay for tutors (at least two on pb) and send younger children not to prep schools but to small (often after-school) classes in converted shops, of which there are many round here.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Mt St Marys and Barlborough Hall going near where I used to live (NE Derbs) was a bit of a surprise. But the grounds and buildings must have needed a fortune in maintenance. All the local athletics and running clubs use the track there, not sure what'll happen to it.
Private conference/wedding venue or sold off for housing.
It's such a terrible idea policy-wise.
Conference centre or venue is a very possible idea.
Barlborough is to the M1 what Hammersmith is to the A4.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Mt St Marys and Barlborough Hall going near where I used to live (NE Derbs) was a bit of a surprise. But the grounds and buildings must have needed a fortune in maintenance. All the local athletics and running clubs use the track there, not sure what'll happen to it.
Hopefully the running track and athletics facilities can be kept alive with lottery money. They don’t need too much maintenance and much of the capital equipment can likely be purchased cheap from the liquidator.
@TSE "My view is that the bombings ultimately saved more lives than they killed"
Including those that died from radiation long after the Japanese surrender?
Yes
The Japanese plan was to die fighting the invasion - mass suicide attacks. Including the civilian population, armed with bamboo spears.
There was also a famine coming - the Japanese Military plan to deal with that was to reserve food for the military and let the civilians starve.
The US military casualties were computed using the results of previous battles. They were stilling using the Purple Hearts (medals for the wounded) made in response to the expected numbers, today.
The invasion of Japan would have been a mass slaughter. It would have killed millions of Japanese - probably a serious percentage of the entire population.
My step dad was doing amphibious landing training in the Spring of 1945 so he was convinced that he would have been on the Japanese version of D-Day and he was equally convinced he would die in the process. He was with his future first wife at the pictures when the news came out of the Japanese surrender and emerged out of the cinema to discover what happened and then he knew that he did have a rest of his life to live.
The FT has the details of the Anglo-French migrants deal. As in, the actual wording
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
Who the flip do you think would pay? Germany? The Qatari sovereign wealth fund? Here's a clue – Rwanda's treasury was never on the hook for those flights either.
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
I thought the theory that it was at Stalin's request had been debunked (the version I heard was that the destruction of Dresden was Stalin's price for entering the war against Japan). Yes it was aimed at softening defences on the Eastern front, but part of normal strategic planning. The Soviet Union was our ally and operations intended to help it were routine
It is interesting that the Soviets never developed a serious strategic bomber campaign. I am sure that in large part they were happy for the British and US to do that. They concentrated on light bombers and ground attack...
I think it was more that they didn't have the industrial technology or capacity.
"However, police said misinformation had been spread online that one of the men - and the woman - were Somali migrants, which the English Defence League (EDL) founder, Tommy Robinson, similarly claimed."
Needless to say, the convicted man was far from being Somali. And had a history of violence.
That's what Lee Anderson did concerning the arrest of a man suspected of rape, which was worked up into the Ashfield demonstration.
He made the "asylum seeker" claim when there was no such official statement made by any body.
I still have not been able to discover whether Anderson's claim is true or not.
It is no clear to me whether the Yvette Cooper suggestion that ethnicity information of suspects be releasable by police if they judge will help. Anderson, GB News etc are already running entirely dishonest demonisation campaigns aganikst Muslims and immigrants, and I think they will just pivot to a different pressure point.
If the government thinks that groups of activists are spreading lies or playing with stories to stir up dissent, then it’s in the government’s own interest to get the truth out as quickly as possible. Instead they mostly appear to be trying their best to avoid the subject.
The FT has the details of the Anglo-French migrants deal. As in, the actual wording
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
We are begging France to do us a favour. Why would France pay equally for that?
If we want to stop the boats we should all start speaking Welsh and drop the quality of our football, films and music to the level of our print media.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
They could have made it clear that it was temporary, and cut it at in the final Budget before the next election.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
How many rock bands were / are named after features of WW2. It seems to be what I might call a 1970s Crass thing.
I have:
Joy Division - forced camp brothels at Auschwitz etc. Choosing both names are very male things to do imo. Spandau Ballet - disputed, but allegedly the "death dance" done by a person being hanged, or shot with a machine gun.
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was named for a special collar the SS would put on killer hounds that made them go bonzo and poo on ghetto-dwellers
Can't believe you missed Earth Wind and Fire, which clearly pays homage to nazi paganism.
Going back a bit, I see Leon is using AI again.
"Stanshall would become the band's next recruit after that day in 1962, when he and Slater rechristened the existing group The Bonzo Dog Dada Band. In the 2004 BBC Four documentary Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of His Mind, Slater claims that the name was inspired by playing a Dadaist word game using cut-up technique, which involves writing words or phrases on paper, tearing the paper into strips and then randomly re-assembling the strips to form new phrases. One of the phrases created was "Bonzo Dog Dada Band": Bonzo Dog after Bonzo the dog, a popular British cartoon character created by artist George Studdy in the 1920s, and Dada after the early 20th-century art movement."
The FT has the details of the Anglo-French migrants deal. As in, the actual wording
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
Who the flip do you think would pay? Germany? The Qatari sovereign wealth fund? Here's a clue – Rwanda's treasury was never on the hook for those flights either.
I know, silly me. I just thought if we’re taking all these asylum seekers from inside France at an estimated lifetime cost of £400,000 even for a median wage worker (if they become workers) then I thought France, being happily relieved of this burden, might chip in maybe €5 euro per asylum seeker plus an almond croissant?
But no. I guess I should be happy Starmer didn’t also offer Blenheim Palace, Shetland, all the pubs in Yorkshire and the use of the Weald for French nuclear testing
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
They could have made it clear that it was temporary, and cut it at in the final Budget before the next election.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
It is what the electorate persistently vote for so what we get. Teeter along with sticking plasters to eke out what we can before either we hit disaster or unexpected good fortune down the line.
Reform will be no different when they get their chance. May even fall faster in popularity as likely to be more chaotic.
"However, police said misinformation had been spread online that one of the men - and the woman - were Somali migrants, which the English Defence League (EDL) founder, Tommy Robinson, similarly claimed."
Needless to say, the convicted man was far from being Somali. And had a history of violence.
That's what Lee Anderson did concerning the arrest of a man suspected of rape, which was worked up into the Ashfield demonstration.
He made the "asylum seeker" claim when there was no such official statement made by any body.
I still have not been able to discover whether Anderson's claim is true or not.
It is no clear to me whether the Yvette Cooper suggestion that ethnicity information of suspects be releasable by police if they judge will help. Anderson, GB News etc are already running entirely dishonest demonisation campaigns aganikst Muslims and immigrants, and I think they will just pivot to a different pressure point.
If the government thinks that groups of activists are spreading lies or playing with stories to stir up dissent, then it’s in the government’s own interest to get the truth out as quickly as possible. Instead they mostly appear to be trying their best to avoid the subject.
I'm not sure of the best way to tackle it. Anderson puts out quite serious misinformation from time to time.
I think part of this is down to the current Govt being timid around their own principles.
The FT has the details of the Anglo-French migrants deal. As in, the actual wording
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
We are begging France to do us a favour. Why would France pay equally for that?
If we want to stop the boats we should all start speaking Welsh and drop the quality of our football, films and music to the level of our print media.
Because, if you remove the small boats problem then you reduce the draw to the UK. If you reduce the draw to the UK you reduce the draw to the Calais region and the costs borne by the French taxpayer and the time and expense to local authorities with all of the associated issues of housing tens of thousands of people who have no jobs, homes, attaché,not to the region/country.
The amount of interviews with people from Calais bemoaning the migrants, the camps, the crimes etc and they are angry that the UK makes it easy for these people to work in UK and hence a build up, on French soil.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
The problem is the attitude of the permanent structure of government. Who regarded many of the successes of pandemic as threats to their ordered world.
For example, the dashboard team was disbanded and got rid of, the moment the idea was mooted (by the previous government) of doing the same thing across government data. Control of the truth is important to controlling policy.
The testing lab learnings were got rid of - faster, more automated, cheaper testing not wanted here, thank you.
A friend who was involved in getting one of the Nightingale hospitals constructed on schedule was told, when she was pushed out of her job, that her success was embarrassing for the department.
And so on.
This process resembled the way in which, after WWII, large numbers of things that were embarrassingly successful were shut down and got rid of. See RV Jews and scientific intelligence.
The trouble with #ClassicDom's plans to ignore data protection and collate all statistics into a central location, is that it starts with monitoring the pandemic but leads quickly to emailing the Taliban a hitlist of Afghans who'd helped us because a dataset compiled for one reason gets used for something completely different by people unaware of its origins or sensitivity.
HMG makes the same mistake with health data. Bundle it up and sell it to American Big Pharma. What could go wrong? Or burning everyone's tax status onto a couple of CDs and losing them.
But yes, on your wider point, cutting programmes that work is as ingrained and as stupid.
ETA as an aside, my job with a global megacorp included building dashboards and charts for private and public sector customers. It was very rare they showed any interest after the first couple of weeks. Once they've scratched their itch and solved the problem, they move straight on to the next project.
The data security/privacy argument is deployed by the turf protectors. It’s horse shit.
Collecting data, securing it, anonymising it and protecting it are all standard, solved problems.
Just because of epic incompetence by the existing idiots in creating “The NOC list” from Mission Impossible, doesn’t mean it has to be done that way.
Modern methods and tools make fine grained data control and protection much easier than at anytime previously.
In fact such systems lock down access as part of their operation - so exporting the original data is physically impossible.
Which is why the dashboard team could build the dashboard.
How many rock bands were / are named after features of WW2. It seems to be what I might call a 1970s Crass thing.
I have:
Joy Division - forced camp brothels at Auschwitz etc. Choosing both names are very male things to do imo. Spandau Ballet - disputed, but allegedly the "death dance" done by a person being hanged, or shot with a machine gun.
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was named for a special collar the SS would put on killer hounds that made them go bonzo and poo on ghetto-dwellers
Can't believe you missed Earth Wind and Fire, which clearly pays homage to nazi paganism.
Going back a bit, I see Leon is using AI again.
"Stanshall would become the band's next recruit after that day in 1962, when he and Slater rechristened the existing group The Bonzo Dog Dada Band. In the 2004 BBC Four documentary Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of His Mind, Slater claims that the name was inspired by playing a Dadaist word game using cut-up technique, which involves writing words or phrases on paper, tearing the paper into strips and then randomly re-assembling the strips to form new phrases. One of the phrases created was "Bonzo Dog Dada Band": Bonzo Dog after Bonzo the dog, a popular British cartoon character created by artist George Studdy in the 1920s, and Dada after the early 20th-century art movement."
Yes, amazingly, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was NOT named for a special collar the SS would put on killer hounds that made them go bonzo and poo on ghetto-dwellers
For those of you interested in Ukraine, TaskAndPurpose alumni Chris Cappy has just released a YouTube update. It's easy to understand and it's well worth your time.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
The problem is the attitude of the permanent structure of government. Who regarded many of the successes of pandemic as threats to their ordered world.
For example, the dashboard team was disbanded and got rid of, the moment the idea was mooted (by the previous government) of doing the same thing across government data. Control of the truth is important to controlling policy.
The testing lab learnings were got rid of - faster, more automated, cheaper testing not wanted here, thank you.
A friend who was involved in getting one of the Nightingale hospitals constructed on schedule was told, when she was pushed out of her job, that her success was embarrassing for the department.
And so on.
This process resembled the way in which, after WWII, large numbers of things that were embarrassingly successful were shut down and got rid of. See RV Jews and scientific intelligence.
The trouble with #ClassicDom's plans to ignore data protection and collate all statistics into a central location, is that it starts with monitoring the pandemic but leads quickly to emailing the Taliban a hitlist of Afghans who'd helped us because a dataset compiled for one reason gets used for something completely different by people unaware of its origins or sensitivity.
HMG makes the same mistake with health data. Bundle it up and sell it to American Big Pharma. What could go wrong? Or burning everyone's tax status onto a couple of CDs and losing them.
But yes, on your wider point, cutting programmes that work is as ingrained and as stupid.
ETA as an aside, my job with a global megacorp included building dashboards and charts for private and public sector customers. It was very rare they showed any interest after the first couple of weeks. Once they've scratched their itch and solved the problem, they move straight on to the next project.
The data security/privacy argument is deployed by the turf protectors. It’s horse shit.
Collecting data, securing it, anonymising it and protecting it are all standard, solved problems.
Just because of epic incompetence by the existing idiots in creating “The NOC list” from Mission Impossible, doesn’t mean it has to be done that way.
Modern methods and tools make fine grained data control and protection much easier than at anytime previously.
In fact such systems lock down access as part of their operation - so exporting the original data is physically impossible.
Which is why the dashboard team could build the dashboard.
But then, outside a pandemic, we have the government advertising for “Senior Data Security Specialist”, 10 years experience, CISM, CISSP, developed vetting, London-based, Grade Y pays £65k/year.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
Can the EU not step in here? Maybe cut a deal as someone orange always likes to do.
The UK should be shovelling money at research Universities here , we have a number of the top ten global as it is, to set up Jobs to get these companies to relocate their research on these vaccines.
Not only is it a massive public good in creating vaccines, protecting the future public, attracting scientists, attracting jobs but it could also see windfalls such as the Covid vaccines did for those companies, the potential spin offs - we’ve seen the money that the fat jabs have generated and who knows what else will come from these vaccine research teams.
There could be few better uses of taxpayer money at the moment, could have used Chagos money of course but happily those millions are helping Mauritians escape the terror of income tax.
Shame the research institute and the emergency factory got closed by the last government, even as covid was still around.
Absolutely, not letting them off the hook for stupid decisions on research either. But we can’t go back and stop that, we can (the govt can) make good strategic decisions now however that will be a win/win and should be congratulated by anyone, regardless of party loyalties, if they did so.
The problem is the attitude of the permanent structure of government. Who regarded many of the successes of pandemic as threats to their ordered world.
For example, the dashboard team was disbanded and got rid of, the moment the idea was mooted (by the previous government) of doing the same thing across government data. Control of the truth is important to controlling policy.
The testing lab learnings were got rid of - faster, more automated, cheaper testing not wanted here, thank you.
A friend who was involved in getting one of the Nightingale hospitals constructed on schedule was told, when she was pushed out of her job, that her success was embarrassing for the department.
And so on.
This process resembled the way in which, after WWII, large numbers of things that were embarrassingly successful were shut down and got rid of. See RV Jews and scientific intelligence.
The trouble with #ClassicDom's plans to ignore data protection and collate all statistics into a central location, is that it starts with monitoring the pandemic but leads quickly to emailing the Taliban a hitlist of Afghans who'd helped us because a dataset compiled for one reason gets used for something completely different by people unaware of its origins or sensitivity.
HMG makes the same mistake with health data. Bundle it up and sell it to American Big Pharma. What could go wrong? Or burning everyone's tax status onto a couple of CDs and losing them.
But yes, on your wider point, cutting programmes that work is as ingrained and as stupid.
ETA as an aside, my job with a global megacorp included building dashboards and charts for private and public sector customers. It was very rare they showed any interest after the first couple of weeks. Once they've scratched their itch and solved the problem, they move straight on to the next project.
The data security/privacy argument is deployed by the turf protectors. It’s horse shit.
Collecting data, securing it, anonymising it and protecting it are all standard, solved problems.
Just because of epic incompetence by the existing idiots in creating “The NOC list” from Mission Impossible, doesn’t mean it has to be done that way.
Modern methods and tools make fine grained data control and protection much easier than at anytime previously.
In fact such systems lock down access as part of their operation - so exporting the original data is physically impossible.
Which is why the dashboard team could build the dashboard.
The problem is that running a secure database system like that requires paying developers & database administrators & all those other expensive IT contractors. It’s /so/ much easier for a civil servant to knock out an Excel spreadsheet with all that lovely data on it. If something goes wrong later on they will have moved on & it won’t be their problem.
This is what concerns people - it’s not that it’s impossible to secure data, it’s that it takes effort & that effort costs money, money that the government is loath to spend on a new project: The incentives all line up in exactly the wrong direction internally thanks to the “nobody ever faces any consequences for their misdeeds” culture within the civil service.
IIRC the health database was done “the right way” & has been a success - researchers do not get access to the data, they get to run vetted queries against the database & receive the results. The output is checked to make sure that data doesn’t leak, including by putting together the results of multiple requires to reconstruct individual people’s information.
So it can be done, if the motivation is there. It’s making sure that the motivation is there that’s the issue.
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
It's a huge blow to healthcare and the culmination of the Republican Party's descent into conspiracy theories and feelings over facts. This is why I hope very much that people in the UK will vote tactically against Reform UK, who's 2024 manifesto was already pandering to anti-vax sentiment.
The FT has the details of the Anglo-French migrants deal. As in, the actual wording
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
Who the flip do you think would pay? Germany? The Qatari sovereign wealth fund? Here's a clue – Rwanda's treasury was never on the hook for those flights either.
I know, silly me. I just thought if we’re taking all these asylum seekers from inside France at an estimated lifetime cost of £400,000 even for a median wage worker (if they become workers) then I thought France, being happily relieved of this burden, might chip in maybe €5 euro per asylum seeker plus an almond croissant?
But no. I guess I should be happy Starmer didn’t also offer Blenheim Palace, Shetland, all the pubs in Yorkshire and the use of the Weald for French nuclear testing
Perhaps he has done and we're prevented from knowing by a government super-injunction.
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
I thought the theory that it was at Stalin's request had been debunked (the version I heard was that the destruction of Dresden was Stalin's price for entering the war against Japan). Yes it was aimed at softening defences on the Eastern front, but part of normal strategic planning. The Soviet Union was our ally and operations intended to help it were routine
It is interesting that the Soviets never developed a serious strategic bomber campaign. I am sure that in large part they were happy for the British and US to do that. They concentrated on light bombers and ground attack...
I think it was more that they didn't have the industrial technology or capacity.
The crash of this propaganda plane aroused such passion in Russia that the population voluntarily donated enough to build a new fleet of them. Only one (ANT-20BIS) was built, which also crashed. I wonder where the rest of the donated money ended up... ?
The FT has the details of the Anglo-French migrants deal. As in, the actual wording
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
We are begging France to do us a favour. Why would France pay equally for that?
If we want to stop the boats we should all start speaking Welsh and drop the quality of our football, films and music to the level of our print media.
Because, if you remove the small boats problem then you reduce the draw to the UK. If you reduce the draw to the UK you reduce the draw to the Calais region and the costs borne by the French taxpayer and the time and expense to local authorities with all of the associated issues of housing tens of thousands of people who have no jobs, homes, attaché,not to the region/country.
The amount of interviews with people from Calais bemoaning the migrants, the camps, the crimes etc and they are angry that the UK makes it easy for these people to work in UK and hence a build up, on French soil.
So it’s not just the UK who benefits.
Here was the Conservative party solution under Sunak:
"Sunak and Macron summit: UK to give £500m to help France curb small boat crossings"
Cameron, May and Johnson all struck similar deals.
Now of course it is possible that the French would gladly do this without UK govt money and all our PMs just like spending money like confetti but I would suggest instead the history of these deals is driven by who has the cards here.
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Mt St Marys and Barlborough Hall going near where I used to live (NE Derbs) was a bit of a surprise. But the grounds and buildings must have needed a fortune in maintenance. All the local athletics and running clubs use the track there, not sure what'll happen to it.
Hopefully the running track and athletics facilities can be kept alive with lottery money. They don’t need too much maintenance and much of the capital equipment can likely be purchased cheap from the liquidator.
Assuming those who are pro VAT on schools and are ultimately hoping for a UK where there are no private schools anymore got their wish, there is a question I would love them to answer.
What happens to these places? Obviously a number can be co-opted into existing state schools but it’s not that easy.
Firstly is the simple one, a lot of these private schools are in the middle of nowhere. They aren’t built for the convenience of bigger conurbations, they would at easiest need huge amounts of transport to get the children to these places on a daily basis and some would be frankly completely impractical.
My second query is about who pays for the upkeep? Say you suddenly have Winchester, Eton, Harrow, Stowe, Radley etc in the hands of the State. There are huge amounts of Grade 1 and 2 listed buildings there - to put it into perspective Winchester College has 18 grade 1 listed and over 70 grade 2 listed, the Greater Manchester has 15 grade 1 listed and 80 grade 2. So you can’t just let them rot, sell off as housing, build on protected grounds.
Does this money from from the education budget to upkeep them whilst using as state schools or does the taxpayer have to shell out for the upkeep of buildings, grounds and sports facilities separately?
It’s not the biggest issue about private/state but I would love to know what those who want private closed down would do about this.
I mean if I was French (pause....ugh...) and in govt I would be fast-tracking all unwanted immigrants to Ferry Terminal No.2 in Calais and handing out puncture repair kits and emergency rations to the dinghy gangs.
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
I thought the theory that it was at Stalin's request had been debunked (the version I heard was that the destruction of Dresden was Stalin's price for entering the war against Japan). Yes it was aimed at softening defences on the Eastern front, but part of normal strategic planning. The Soviet Union was our ally and operations intended to help it were routine
It is interesting that the Soviets never developed a serious strategic bomber campaign. I am sure that in large part they were happy for the British and US to do that. They concentrated on light bombers and ground attack...
I think it was more that they didn't have the industrial technology or capacity.
The crash of this propaganda plane aroused such passion in Russia that the population voluntarily donated enough to build a new fleet of them. Only one (ANT-20BIS) was built, which also crashed...
..On 14 December 1942, it crashed after the pilot allowed a passenger to take his seat momentarily and the passenger activated the stabilizer control mechanism via a switch on the pilot's armrest, raising the stabilizer and sending the airplane into a nosedive from an altitude of 500 m (1,600 ft), killing all 36 on board...
I got told last night that a private school I used to work with is closing.
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Mt St Marys and Barlborough Hall going near where I used to live (NE Derbs) was a bit of a surprise. But the grounds and buildings must have needed a fortune in maintenance. All the local athletics and running clubs use the track there, not sure what'll happen to it.
Hopefully the running track and athletics facilities can be kept alive with lottery money. They don’t need too much maintenance and much of the capital equipment can likely be purchased cheap from the liquidator.
Assuming those who are pro VAT on schools and are ultimately hoping for a UK where there are no private schools anymore got their wish, there is a question I would love them to answer.
What happens to these places? Obviously a number can be co-opted into existing state schools but it’s not that easy.
Firstly is the simple one, a lot of these private schools are in the middle of nowhere. They aren’t built for the convenience of bigger conurbations, they would at easiest need huge amounts of transport to get the children to these places on a daily basis and some would be frankly completely impractical.
My second query is about who pays for the upkeep? Say you suddenly have Winchester, Eton, Harrow, Stowe, Radley etc in the hands of the State. There are huge amounts of Grade 1 and 2 listed buildings there - to put it into perspective Winchester College has 18 grade 1 listed and over 70 grade 2 listed, the Greater Manchester has 15 grade 1 listed and 80 grade 2. So you can’t just let them rot, sell off as housing, build on protected grounds.
Does this money from from the education budget to upkeep them whilst using as state schools or does the taxpayer have to shell out for the upkeep of buildings, grounds and sports facilities separately?
It’s not the biggest issue about private/state but I would love to know what those who want private closed down would do about this.
Good points but there is zero chance of Winchester, Eton, Harrow etc ever going into the state sector.
They have large endowments and rich parents from all over the world sending their children there as boarders and branches overseas now too, including in Asia.
Even if VAT on school fees has hit smaller, cheaper all day schools
How many rock bands were / are named after features of WW2. It seems to be what I might call a 1970s Crass thing.
I have:
Joy Division - forced camp brothels at Auschwitz etc. Choosing both names are very male things to do imo. Spandau Ballet - disputed, but allegedly the "death dance" done by a person being hanged, or shot with a machine gun.
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band was named for a special collar the SS would put on killer hounds that made them go bonzo and poo on ghetto-dwellers
Can't believe you missed Earth Wind and Fire, which clearly pays homage to nazi paganism.
I thought they were named after the result from eating too many raw chillis?
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
I thought the theory that it was at Stalin's request had been debunked (the version I heard was that the destruction of Dresden was Stalin's price for entering the war against Japan). Yes it was aimed at softening defences on the Eastern front, but part of normal strategic planning. The Soviet Union was our ally and operations intended to help it were routine
It is interesting that the Soviets never developed a serious strategic bomber campaign. I am sure that in large part they were happy for the British and US to do that. They concentrated on light bombers and ground attack...
I think it was more that they didn't have the industrial technology or capacity.
The crash of this propaganda plane aroused such passion in Russia that the population voluntarily donated enough to build a new fleet of them. Only one (ANT-20BIS) was built, which also crashed...
..On 14 December 1942, it crashed after the pilot allowed a passenger to take his seat momentarily and the passenger activated the stabilizer control mechanism via a switch on the pilot's armrest, raising the stabilizer and sending the airplane into a nosedive from an altitude of 500 m (1,600 ft), killing all 36 on board...
I'd have to rewatch the video, but ISTR it was claimed that the pilot was found not in the cockpit, and without his trousers on...
Rayner's house building plans are as on track as Kendall welfare reforms and Reeves's deficit reduction:
There was a considerable slump in the UK construction sector at the start of the third quarter. According to the latest S&P Global PMI® survey data, total industry activity levels fell at the steepest pace since May 2020.
Underlying data highlighted marked decreases in volumes of work carried out across all three monitored sub-sectors, but a considerable drag came from a fresh drop in residential building.
Posting 44.3 in July, down from 48.8 in June, the headline S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI®) – a seasonally adjusted index tracking changes in total industry activity – signalled the sharpest contraction in over five years at the start of the third quarter.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
They could have made it clear that it was temporary, and cut it at in the final Budget before the next election.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
It is what the electorate persistently vote for so what we get. Teeter along with sticking plasters to eke out what we can before either we hit disaster or unexpected good fortune down the line.
Reform will be no different when they get their chance. May even fall faster in popularity as likely to be more chaotic.
It’s not just a UK problem either, much of the developed world is totally screwed, yet there remains little enthusiasm among the electorate to do anything about it.
Argentina appears to have mostly succeeded with the right-wing approach in recent years, others such as Denmark have succeeded with a more left-wing approach.
Meanwhile, many of the major economies have huge budget deficits and debt/GDP ratios above 100%. In many cases they hadn’t properly recovered from the 2008 recession when the pandemic hit.
The US had a good go at cutting out waste, but the Executive can’t do much without Congress, who are still as keen as ever to line their own pockets, and don’t dare vote to cut a penny from spending on their own constituents. They’ll still be adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt this year.
I can see that this cycle continues in many countries, with more and more extremist governments been elected over the next decade, until either economies crash or there’s the political will to actually fix the problems.
It's curious that there should be such differing responses to the strategic bombing, and the use of atomic weapons.
Personally, I'm with Sir Arthur Harris, on this:
The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.
I watched a documentary on Dresden. The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin. The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first. The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
I thought the theory that it was at Stalin's request had been debunked (the version I heard was that the destruction of Dresden was Stalin's price for entering the war against Japan). Yes it was aimed at softening defences on the Eastern front, but part of normal strategic planning. The Soviet Union was our ally and operations intended to help it were routine
It is interesting that the Soviets never developed a serious strategic bomber campaign. I am sure that in large part they were happy for the British and US to do that. They concentrated on light bombers and ground attack...
I think it was more that they didn't have the industrial technology or capacity.
The crash of this propaganda plane aroused such passion in Russia that the population voluntarily donated enough to build a new fleet of them. Only one (ANT-20BIS) was built, which also crashed...
..On 14 December 1942, it crashed after the pilot allowed a passenger to take his seat momentarily and the passenger activated the stabilizer control mechanism via a switch on the pilot's armrest, raising the stabilizer and sending the airplane into a nosedive from an altitude of 500 m (1,600 ft), killing all 36 on board...
The first crash stands as a grim warning against scale biplanes.
.. On 18 May 1935, the Maxim Gorky (with pilots I. V. Mikheyev and I. S. Zhurov) and three more aircraft (a Tupolev ANT-14, R-5 and I-5) took off for a demonstration flight over Moscow. The main purpose of the other three aircraft flying so close was to make evident the difference in size. The accompanying I-5 biplane piloted by Nikolai Blagin had performed two loop manoeuvres around the Maxim Gorky. On the third loop, they collided. The Maxim Gorky crashed into a low-rise residential neighbourhood west of present-day Sokol metro station. Forty-five people were killed in the crash, including the fighter pilot as well as both crew members and the 33 passengers on the Maxim Gorky, and an additional nine people on the ground..
A mistake the US repeated, three decades later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie#Mid-air_collision On 8 June 1966, XB-70A No. 2 was in close formation with four other aircraft (an F-4 Phantom, an F-5, a T-38 Talon, and an F-104 Starfighter) for a photoshoot at the behest of General Electric, manufacturer of the engines of all five aircraft...
Rayner's house building plans are as on track as Kendall welfare reforms and Reeves's deficit reduction:
There was a considerable slump in the UK construction sector at the start of the third quarter. According to the latest S&P Global PMI® survey data, total industry activity levels fell at the steepest pace since May 2020.
Underlying data highlighted marked decreases in volumes of work carried out across all three monitored sub-sectors, but a considerable drag came from a fresh drop in residential building.
Posting 44.3 in July, down from 48.8 in June, the headline S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI®) – a seasonally adjusted index tracking changes in total industry activity – signalled the sharpest contraction in over five years at the start of the third quarter.
To put that into context here is the report from a year ago:
Growth accelerated in the UK construction sector as the second half of the year got underway, with July seeing much faster increases in both activity and new orders during the month. In turn, firms ramped up purchasing activity and raised staffing levels for the third month running. Higher demand for inputs imparted some pressure on supply chains, and input costs increased at a faster pace.
The headline S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI®) – a seasonally adjusted index tracking changes in total industry activity – rose sharply to 55.3 in July from 52.2 in June. The reading signalled a marked monthly expansion in total activity in the construction sector, extending the current sequence of growth to five months. Moreover, the rate of expansion was the fastest since May 2022.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
They could have made it clear that it was temporary, and cut it at in the final Budget before the next election.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
It is what the electorate persistently vote for so what we get. Teeter along with sticking plasters to eke out what we can before either we hit disaster or unexpected good fortune down the line.
Reform will be no different when they get their chance. May even fall faster in popularity as likely to be more chaotic.
It’s not just a UK problem either, much of the developed world is totally screwed, yet there remains little enthusiasm among the electorate to do anything about it.
Argentina appears to have mostly succeeded with the right-wing approach in recent years, others such as Denmark have succeeded with a more left-wing approach.
Meanwhile, many of the major economies have huge budget deficits and debt/GDP ratios above 100%. In many cases they hadn’t properly recovered from the 2008 recession when the pandemic hit.
The US had a good go at cutting out waste, but the Executive can’t do much without Congress, who are still as keen as ever to line their own pockets, and don’t dare vote to cut a penny from spending on their own constituents. They’ll still be adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt this year.
I can see that this cycle continues in many countries, with more and more extremist governments been elected over the next decade, until either economies crash or there’s the political will to actually fix the problems.
Argentina is more about applying the classic IMF treatment, internally, than right wing populism.
Note *removal* of trade and currency barriers, rejection of tarrifs etc.
This is because the Argentine economic disaster was a *product* of populist policies - protectionism, high spending on sectional bribes to the electorate, money printing etc.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
They could have made it clear that it was temporary, and cut it at in the final Budget before the next election.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
It is what the electorate persistently vote for so what we get. Teeter along with sticking plasters to eke out what we can before either we hit disaster or unexpected good fortune down the line.
Reform will be no different when they get their chance. May even fall faster in popularity as likely to be more chaotic.
It’s not just a UK problem either, much of the developed world is totally screwed, yet there remains little enthusiasm among the electorate to do anything about it.
Argentina appears to have mostly succeeded with the right-wing approach in recent years, others such as Denmark have succeeded with a more left-wing approach.
Meanwhile, many of the major economies have huge budget deficits and debt/GDP ratios above 100%. In many cases they hadn’t properly recovered from the 2008 recession when the pandemic hit.
The US had a good go at cutting out waste, but the Executive can’t do much without Congress, who are still as keen as ever to line their own pockets, and don’t dare vote to cut a penny from spending on their own constituents. They’ll still be adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt this year.
I can see that this cycle continues in many countries, with more and more extremist governments been elected over the next decade, until either economies crash or there’s the political will to actually fix the problems.
I don't understand how you seriously think the US had a good go at cutting waste. It was a chaotic sham to give Elon a platform to pretend to cut waste whilst giving him free access to masses of public data and shifting bureaucratic power from one part of the elite to another.
Nothing to do with cutting waste as will be shown by their deficit growing faster under Trump, as it did last time.
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
They could have made it clear that it was temporary, and cut it at in the final Budget before the next election.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
It is what the electorate persistently vote for so what we get. Teeter along with sticking plasters to eke out what we can before either we hit disaster or unexpected good fortune down the line.
Reform will be no different when they get their chance. May even fall faster in popularity as likely to be more chaotic.
It’s not just a UK problem either, much of the developed world is totally screwed, yet there remains little enthusiasm among the electorate to do anything about it.
Argentina appears to have mostly succeeded with the right-wing approach in recent years, others such as Denmark have succeeded with a more left-wing approach.
Meanwhile, many of the major economies have huge budget deficits and debt/GDP ratios above 100%. In many cases they hadn’t properly recovered from the 2008 recession when the pandemic hit.
The US had a good go at cutting out waste, but the Executive can’t do much without Congress, who are still as keen as ever to line their own pockets, and don’t dare vote to cut a penny from spending on their own constituents. They’ll still be adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt this year.
I can see that this cycle continues in many countries, with more and more extremist governments been elected over the next decade, until either economies crash or there’s the political will to actually fix the problems.
I think the end result will always been economies crashing because the political will will never exist - voters like sweeties and easy fixes too much
There was a time when those of us concerned about Government borrowing were slapped down by Government supporters (now Opposition supporters) who asserted borrowing was fine and we could just keep doing it.
£50 billion by 2028/9 isn't quite as bad as it sounds and it'll be easy for some to think that means £50 billion of tax rises now which it doesn't.
Again, we come back to the questions which have afflicted us since 2008 - to reduce the deficit and reduce borrowing, what do we do? Do we raise taxes, do we cut spending? Do we do both? If we do the former, which taxes do we raise? If we do the latter, which areas of public spending do we cut and what will be the impact of both the tax rises and the spending cuts?
Rather like the "boats", plenty of complaining and plenty pointing out the problem but little in the way of practical, workable and coherent solutions. I do think Starmer and Reeves were unwise in ruling out changes to Income Tax and VAT before the election - that was boxing themselves into a corner for no reason.
You’re quite right. The Ming vase strategy was an error. They’re also unwise ruling out reform to The Triple Lock and the public sector pensions that are unfunded.
The should just bite the bullet, break a pledge or two, and raise income tax as well as looking at council tax bands/land tax for starters.
But it’s a mammoth task and not an easy one especially given they fold to their backbenchers when trying to make modest changes to spending as we saw with welfare. A so called cut was simply slowing the rate of growth.
As was discussed on here yesterday, the incoming government had one chance, at their first Budget, to say that the finances were much worse than they had been led to believe, and there’s going to have to be 2p on all income tax rates for the duration of this Parliament.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
See Nick Clegg/Tuition Fees for why they didn't choose that path.
They could have made it clear that it was temporary, and cut it at in the final Budget before the next election.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
It is what the electorate persistently vote for so what we get. Teeter along with sticking plasters to eke out what we can before either we hit disaster or unexpected good fortune down the line.
Reform will be no different when they get their chance. May even fall faster in popularity as likely to be more chaotic.
It’s not just a UK problem either, much of the developed world is totally screwed, yet there remains little enthusiasm among the electorate to do anything about it.
Argentina appears to have mostly succeeded with the right-wing approach in recent years, others such as Denmark have succeeded with a more left-wing approach.
Meanwhile, many of the major economies have huge budget deficits and debt/GDP ratios above 100%. In many cases they hadn’t properly recovered from the 2008 recession when the pandemic hit.
The US had a good go at cutting out waste, but the Executive can’t do much without Congress, who are still as keen as ever to line their own pockets, and don’t dare vote to cut a penny from spending on their own constituents. They’ll still be adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt this year.
I can see that this cycle continues in many countries, with more and more extremist governments been elected over the next decade, until either economies crash or there’s the political will to actually fix the problems.
I don't understand how you seriously think the US had a good go at cutting waste. It was a chaotic sham to give Elon a platform to pretend to cut waste whilst giving him free access to masses of public data and shifting bureaucratic power from one part of the elite to another.
Nothing to do with cutting waste as will be shown by their deficit growing faster under Trump, as it did last time.
Look at actions, not words.
Also, "the Executive can’t do much without Congress" isn't much of an excuse, when Trump has more or less absolute control of Congress at least until the midterms.
I was just out and about and a thought occurred to me..... if the launch of Corbyns party really hammers Labour, might they try a really out there imposition of PR (with presumably Tory and LD support if the former are still dying horribly and the latter stick to their guns plus SNP and Plaid will be fairly keen i think) - to impose it before the next election they could just keep existing boundaries, have Orkney/Shetland and Western Isles retain their special fptp individual status and split the remaining 648 constituencies into 108 groups of 6 with 6 to be elected in each on D'hondt basis like Wales. Hail Mary shut out Reform from majority effort?
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
It's a huge blow to healthcare and the culmination of the Republican Party's descent into conspiracy theories and feelings over facts. This is why I hope very much that people in the UK will vote tactically against Reform UK, who's 2024 manifesto was already pandering to anti-vax sentiment.
I'll probably vote Conservative, for the first time ever, in the next GE. This is not out of any love for the Tories, but purely to keep Reform out of my solidly Tory constituency. While I disagree with many of the policies pursued by the other parties, they do at least have some grounding in reality, albeit rather tenuous in some cases. Reform, though, are qualitatively different; they are dangerous fantasists and possibly a threat to our democracy.
I was just out and about and a thought occurred to me..... if the launch of Corbyns party really hammers Labour, might they try a really out there imposition of PR (with presumably Tory and LD support if the former are still dying horribly and the latter stick to their guns plus SNP and Plaid will be fairly keen i think) - to impose it before the next election they could just keep existing boundaries, have Orkney/Shetland and Western Isles retain their special fptp individual status and split the remaining 648 constituencies into 108 groups of 6 with 6 to be elected in each on D'hondt basis like Wales. Hail Mary shut out Reform from majority effort?
No. They have got a stonking majority on 33% of the vote themselves. They quite like the current set up. (As do all election winners under FPTP surprisingly enough).
"RFK Jr cancels $500m in funding for mRNA vaccines that counter viruses like Covid"
"The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to cancel $500m (£376m) in funding for mRNA vaccines being developed to counter viruses like the flu and Covid-19.
The move will impact 22 projects being led by major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer and Moderna, for vaccines against bird flu and other viruses, HHS said."
There's a possibility that RFK Jr's hands will be bloodier than Stalin's or Hitler's. All it will take is another pandemic. And perhaps not even that.
It's a huge blow to healthcare and the culmination of the Republican Party's descent into conspiracy theories and feelings over facts. This is why I hope very much that people in the UK will vote tactically against Reform UK, who's 2024 manifesto was already pandering to anti-vax sentiment.
I'll probably vote conservative, for the first time ever, in the next GE. This is not out of any love for the Tories, but purely to keep Reform out. While I disagree with many of the policies pursued by the other parties, they do at least have some grounding in reality, albeit rather tenuous in some cases. Reform, though, are qualitatively different; they are dangerous fantasists and possibly a threat to our democracy.
They are mostly the same people who were in the Conservative party five to ten years ago.
If enough of them leave perhaps the Conservative party will become interesting again.
Comments
That however was nothing to do with VAT and is probably long overdue for reasons I won't go into here (as TSE might not like it).
So far since VAT came in most of the schools that are shutting seem to be marginal cases that were likely to fold soon anyway for unrelated reasons. I'm just not terribly optimistic about how long that will continue to be the case.
Apart from a shocker on the Stewards Cup on Saturday they are usually as good as anyone and better than the normal odds anywhere.
In this new case Trump literally phoned Abbot and said - get me five more seats.
"Man who went on run to be sentenced for murder of woman walking dog"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cyvn30vj582t
But in a linked story about the same case:
"However, police said misinformation had been spread online that one of the men - and the woman - were Somali migrants, which the English Defence League (EDL) founder, Tommy Robinson, similarly claimed."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8errjz9w17o
Needless to say, the convicted man was far from being Somali. And had a history of violence.
The Dresden bombing happened at the request of Stalin.
The Battle of the Bulge had temporarily slowed the advance of the Western Allies, so Russian forces would now reach Dresden first.
The bombing of Dresden was to lessen Russian casualties in taking the city.
https://www.isc.co.uk/media/uukn4r3i/isc_census_2024_15may24.pdf
Some interesting stats in there. Figure 6 suggests that the pre-VAT trend was for the number of pupils in private schools to increase.
https://x.com/Gadget44027447/status/1952933997329133957
THere is a list here, but it may not be complete and it blames all the closures on VAT which probably isn't correct (Bedstone, for example, was in trouble anyway).
https://www.getamplified.org/private-school-closure-due-to-vat
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/12/uk_national_supercomputer_edinburgh/
German's Biontech is co-developing some of the vaccines with Pfizer (and has others of its own). Those will probably continue.
Moderna is a bit more shaky.
For example, the dashboard team was disbanded and got rid of, the moment the idea was mooted (by the previous government) of doing the same thing across government data. Control of the truth is important to controlling policy.
The testing lab learnings were got rid of - faster, more automated, cheaper testing not wanted here, thank you.
A friend who was involved in getting one of the Nightingale hospitals constructed on schedule was told, when she was pushed out of her job, that her success was embarrassing for the department.
And so on.
This process resembled the way in which, after WWII, large numbers of things that were embarrassingly successful were shut down and got rid of. See RV Jews and scientific intelligence.
(Scheme set up I think in the noughties, with some sort of right to pause whilst they try and raise money.)
The rub may be what happens in the case of a partial purchase.
OTOH it could go partly for housing with the sports area as Section 106.
https://x.com/NancyMace/status/1952777147073847794
The Times ran a headline a couple of days ago of X private schools closing since VAT, omitting that the number of closures was average for recent years and actually more new schools were opened than old ones closed.
I note too that voters don't like unnecessary elections at short notice, as Sunak found out too. One reason amongst several that Labour will go the full term to 2029.
But it's highly unlikely it will have no effect at all.
I am mildly curious as to their thought process. Did they really think he couldn't do much damage in 4 years?
A price shock of 20% on fees, plus employer's NI rising to 15%, and making the schools fully taxable businesses, will push up costs by 25%+ and that will freeze out many parents in an environment where real wages aren't increasing.
It will close some schools, and make others more socially exclusive.
One benefit of the strategic bombing campaign was to divert German arms production of both artillery and aircraft to anti-aircraft and interceptors, as well as tying up huge manpower. It took the pressure off them for air superiority, and off our forces too once the second fronts started.
Most need £50-60k per year, with VAT, and very very few can afford that.
By contrast, there are still many prep schools charging £5k per term plus VAT, so just south of £20k a year, and two professional parents with one child could still choose to do that.
He made the "asylum seeker" claim when there was no such official statement made by any body.
I still have not been able to discover whether Anderson's claim is true or not.
It is no clear to me whether the Yvette Cooper suggestion that ethnicity information of suspects be releasable by police if they judge will help. Anderson, GB News etc are already running entirely dishonest demonisation campaigns aganikst Muslims and immigrants, and I think they will just pivot to a different pressure point.
If the Government suddenly dumps an extra 20% cost on you, you're dead meat.
The same will happen with businesses - especially pubs - with the NMW and NI hike.
It's such a terrible idea policy-wise.
Instead, they went tinkering with a load of little things, and wasted huge amounts of political capital in exchange for very little additional income.
It was as if they’d spent the last five years doing no preparation for government at all.
HMG makes the same mistake with health data. Bundle it up and sell it to American Big Pharma. What could go wrong? Or burning everyone's tax status onto a couple of CDs and losing them.
But yes, on your wider point, cutting programmes that work is as ingrained and as stupid.
ETA as an aside, my job with a global megacorp included building dashboards and charts for private and public sector customers. It was very rare they showed any interest after the first couple of weeks. Once they've scratched their itch and solved the problem, they move straight on to the next project.
Add in the rich still getting richer far faster than the country does, the shift from meritocracy to kleptocracy and lots of new rich immigrants from Hong Kong and a wash in demand seems perfectly plausible.
Apparently the SNP's replacement for Kate Forbes is... Ian Blackford.
After his handling of the Patrick Grady allegations, he should not be returning to politics. The SNP are really desperate to want to bring him back.
@KennyFarq
Blackford would eat Flynn for breakfast and still have room for breakfast.
Read, and weep
“For those being sent back, the costs “shall be borne by the United Kingdom up until handover points agreed upon”, the documents stated, while those coming from France “shall be provided by the United Kingdom with transport from a designated place to the United Kingdom (at the cost of the United Kingdom)”.”
Barlborough is to the M1 what Hammersmith is to the A4.
Note that the early postwar Soviet strategic bombers were straight copies of the B-29.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4
If we want to stop the boats we should all start speaking Welsh and drop the quality of our football, films and music to the level of our print media.
Instead, they’ve taken all the flak but not raised any money. They’re now both unpopular and broke, with bond rates slowly ticking up to make the situation even worse.
"Stanshall would become the band's next recruit after that day in 1962, when he and Slater rechristened the existing group The Bonzo Dog Dada Band. In the 2004 BBC Four documentary Vivian Stanshall: The Canyons of His Mind, Slater claims that the name was inspired by playing a Dadaist word game using cut-up technique, which involves writing words or phrases on paper, tearing the paper into strips and then randomly re-assembling the strips to form new phrases. One of the phrases created was "Bonzo Dog Dada Band": Bonzo Dog after Bonzo the dog, a popular British cartoon character created by artist George Studdy in the 1920s, and Dada after the early 20th-century art movement."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonzo_Dog_Doo-Dah_Band
But no. I guess I should be happy Starmer didn’t also offer Blenheim Palace, Shetland, all the pubs in Yorkshire and the use of the Weald for French nuclear testing
Reform will be no different when they get their chance. May even fall faster in popularity as likely to be more chaotic.
I think part of this is down to the current Govt being timid around their own principles.
The amount of interviews with people from Calais bemoaning the migrants, the camps, the crimes etc and they are angry that the UK makes it easy for these people to work in UK and hence a build up, on French soil.
So it’s not just the UK who benefits.
Collecting data, securing it, anonymising it and protecting it are all standard, solved problems.
Just because of epic incompetence by the existing idiots in creating “The NOC list” from Mission Impossible, doesn’t mean it has to be done that way.
Modern methods and tools make fine grained data control and protection much easier than at anytime previously.
In fact such systems lock down access as part of their operation - so exporting the original data is physically impossible.
Which is why the dashboard team could build the dashboard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dJDJpG9iQw (19 mins)
▪️ The UK pays all transport and admin costs, both directions.
▪️ France can veto any migrant we want to return, no reason required.
▪️ We can’t cross-check fingerprints of the ones they send, and they won’t run Eurodac checks for us.
▪️ We must process removals within 14 days of arrival or we lose the right to remove them.
▪️ Only around 50 migrants a week can be returned about 5% of weekly crossings.
▪️ Migrants can block their return using human rights appeals.
▪️ We can’t return those citing vague “public interest” concerns.
▪️ The UK MUST accept asylum seekers France chooses, with no independent vetting.
This is what concerns people - it’s not that it’s impossible to secure data, it’s that it takes effort & that effort costs money, money that the government is loath to spend on a new project: The incentives all line up in exactly the wrong direction internally thanks to the “nobody ever faces any consequences for their misdeeds” culture within the civil service.
IIRC the health database was done “the right way” & has been a success - researchers do not get access to the data, they get to run vetted queries against the database & receive the results. The output is checked to make sure that data doesn’t leak, including by putting together the results of multiple requires to reconstruct individual people’s information.
So it can be done, if the motivation is there. It’s making sure that the motivation is there that’s the issue.
The Russians had the largest plane in the world for a while pre-WW2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_ANT-20
The crash of this propaganda plane aroused such passion in Russia that the population voluntarily donated enough to build a new fleet of them. Only one (ANT-20BIS) was built, which also crashed. I wonder where the rest of the donated money ended up... ?
Rex's Hanger video on the plane, well worth a watch IMO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJJfI4qVZi8
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64916446
"Sunak and Macron summit: UK to give £500m to help France curb small boat crossings"
Cameron, May and Johnson all struck similar deals.
Now of course it is possible that the French would gladly do this without UK govt money and all our PMs just like spending money like confetti but I would suggest instead the history of these deals is driven by who has the cards here.
What happens to these places? Obviously a number can be co-opted into existing state schools but it’s not that easy.
Firstly is the simple one, a lot of these private schools are in the middle of nowhere. They aren’t built for the convenience of bigger conurbations, they would at easiest need huge amounts of transport to get the children to these places on a daily basis and some would be frankly completely impractical.
My second query is about who pays for the upkeep? Say you suddenly have Winchester, Eton, Harrow, Stowe, Radley etc in the hands of the State. There are huge amounts of Grade 1 and 2 listed buildings there - to put it into perspective Winchester College has 18 grade 1 listed and over 70 grade 2 listed, the Greater Manchester has 15 grade 1 listed and 80 grade 2. So you can’t just let them rot, sell off as housing, build on protected grounds.
Does this money from from the education budget to upkeep them whilst using as state schools or does the taxpayer have to shell out for the upkeep of buildings, grounds and sports facilities separately?
It’s not the biggest issue about private/state but I would love to know what those who want private closed down would do about this.
Leon keeps raging against himself.
They have large endowments and rich parents from all over the world sending their children there as boarders and branches overseas now too, including in Asia.
Even if VAT on school fees has hit smaller, cheaper all day schools
There was a considerable slump in the UK construction sector at the start of the third quarter. According to the latest S&P
Global PMI® survey data, total industry activity levels fell at the steepest pace since May 2020.
Underlying data highlighted marked decreases in volumes of work carried out across all three monitored sub-sectors,
but a considerable drag came from a fresh drop in residential building.
Posting 44.3 in July, down from 48.8 in June, the headline S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI®) –
a seasonally adjusted index tracking changes in total industry activity – signalled the sharpest contraction in over five years
at the start of the third quarter.
https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/59d4dbfe4d2048148bb40ec8e09e228a
Argentina appears to have mostly succeeded with the right-wing approach in recent years, others such as Denmark have succeeded with a more left-wing approach.
Meanwhile, many of the major economies have huge budget deficits and debt/GDP ratios above 100%. In many cases they hadn’t properly recovered from the 2008 recession when the pandemic hit.
The US had a good go at cutting out waste, but the Executive can’t do much without Congress, who are still as keen as ever to line their own pockets, and don’t dare vote to cut a penny from spending on their own constituents. They’ll still be adding more than a trillion dollars to the debt this year.
I can see that this cycle continues in many countries, with more and more extremist governments been elected over the next decade, until either economies crash or there’s the political will to actually fix the problems.
.. On 18 May 1935, the Maxim Gorky (with pilots I. V. Mikheyev and I. S. Zhurov) and three more aircraft (a Tupolev ANT-14, R-5 and I-5) took off for a demonstration flight over Moscow. The main purpose of the other three aircraft flying so close was to make evident the difference in size. The accompanying I-5 biplane piloted by Nikolai Blagin had performed two loop manoeuvres around the Maxim Gorky. On the third loop, they collided. The Maxim Gorky crashed into a low-rise residential neighbourhood west of present-day Sokol metro station. Forty-five people were killed in the crash, including the fighter pilot as well as both crew members and the 33 passengers on the Maxim Gorky, and an additional nine people on the ground..
A mistake the US repeated, three decades later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie#Mid-air_collision
On 8 June 1966, XB-70A No. 2 was in close formation with four other aircraft (an F-4 Phantom, an F-5, a T-38 Talon, and an F-104 Starfighter) for a photoshoot at the behest of General Electric, manufacturer of the engines of all five aircraft...
Growth accelerated in the UK construction sector as the second half of the year got underway, with July seeing much
faster increases in both activity and new orders during the month. In turn, firms ramped up purchasing activity and
raised staffing levels for the third month running. Higher demand for inputs imparted some pressure on supply chains,
and input costs increased at a faster pace.
The headline S&P Global UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index™ (PMI®) – a seasonally adjusted index
tracking changes in total industry activity – rose sharply to 55.3 in July from 52.2 in June. The reading signalled a marked
monthly expansion in total activity in the construction sector, extending the current sequence of growth to five months.
Moreover, the rate of expansion was the fastest since May 2022.
https://www.pmi.spglobal.com/Public/Home/PressRelease/3492f73427ce4baaba072df99719b7a8
Note *removal* of trade and currency barriers, rejection of tarrifs etc.
This is because the Argentine economic disaster was a *product* of populist policies - protectionism, high spending on sectional bribes to the electorate, money printing etc.
Nothing to do with cutting waste as will be shown by their deficit growing faster under Trump, as it did last time.
Look at actions, not words.
Hail Mary shut out Reform from majority effort?
If enough of them leave perhaps the Conservative party will become interesting again.