Last night, Reform won three out of three contests (and three three town council seats, in Barrow-in-Furness).
What every one had in common was being Labour v Reform. Reform can beat Labour by (a) cannibalising the Conservative or local community party vote, in such seats (b) getting a small direct swing from Labour to themselves (c) turning out former non-voters. Labour can't pull in voters from other left wing parties for they don't exist in any numbers in such seats (save in Wales, and people vote Plaid for more than just left wing reasons).
Labour trying to chase Reform votes costs them votes to the Lib Dems, Greens, and Sultanas, but that is in different types of constituencies, not the Labour v Reform battlegrounds.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
Most of the posters on here seem to have airbrushed out a stagnant economy since 2008 (most of the intervening years being run by, checks notes, Conservative led governments). It would seem records only began in July 2024.
That is not to say that Reeves's tax and spend policy hasn't been chaotic and haphazard, and the pre-election no new taxes guarantee was ridiculous.
We are this morning eulogising Farage as a vehicle of change, yet Farage's two key interventions have been Brexit and confirming his belief that the Truss/Kwarteng budget was "the most Conservative budget since 1986". Neither of which has improved our economy.
I have long been accused of being part of the unhinged anti-Johnson PB herd, and hands up, if there was an anti-Johnson herd I would have been part of it. The anti-Johnson herd however wasn't a patch on the unhinged anti- Starmer-Labour PB herd. @FrancisUrquhart tees up a Telegraph link and the rest pile in.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Neither, in that sense, did Truss.
Like Truss, she is causing government borrowing to get more expensive. Because the markets (and foreign buyers of UK Government bonds) do not see a commitment to anything other than eternally growing debt.
This isn't "Evul Capitalists Attack Labour Government" - if you want to borrow money, you are priced on your likelihood to default. You can either spend less or tax more.
EDIT: Construction is already in recession.
There's no comparison between this situation and Truss. That was a self-inflicted short sharp crisis caused by political hubris and recklessness.
Fact is, we've had low growth since the 08 crash and our public finances are stressed due to the cost of that, and the pandemic, and the energy crisis. Now to compound matters interest rates are back at historical norms. We're off the drug of QE and superlow gilt servicing costs.
There are no easy answers, maybe no answers at all other than to move expectations more in line with reality. But that's in nobody's short term political interest except the government. And they can't do it either because of the need to sound positive. "Going for growth" bla bla.
So there we go. The discourse is nonsense all round and it's hardcoded to stay that way.
Pretty much - expect the current government is doing slow motion Truss.
Part of it is an inability to think and act. It's all about the process. Starmer appears to be a rules engine that takes the law as input and doesn't compute that he is actually supposed to be modifying the rules....
It's hard to imagine that Churchill or Attlee would have reacted to a judge redefining "family" to mean friends and next door neighbours with a shrug. They'd have had legislation in parliament by breakfast and an interview without coffee for the judge (with the Lord Chancellor) by tea.....
'Slow motion Truss' is rather an oxymoron though. The hasty blundering was its essence.
More the tone deaf blundering. 11/10 on tone deaf and 11/10 on blundering.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
There you are - get wossername in the cheap jeans to do the first toss.
Someone who monetised her bath water could definitely make a packet tossing in public.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Neither, in that sense, did Truss.
Like Truss, she is causing government borrowing to get more expensive. Because the markets (and foreign buyers of UK Government bonds) do not see a commitment to anything other than eternally growing debt.
This isn't "Evul Capitalists Attack Labour Government" - if you want to borrow money, you are priced on your likelihood to default. You can either spend less or tax more.
EDIT: Construction is already in recession.
There's no comparison between this situation and Truss. That was a self-inflicted short sharp crisis caused by political hubris and recklessness.
Fact is, we've had low growth since the 08 crash and our public finances are stressed due to the cost of that, and the pandemic, and the energy crisis. Now to compound matters interest rates are back at historical norms. We're off the drug of QE and superlow gilt servicing costs.
There are no easy answers, maybe no answers at all other than to move expectations more in line with reality. But that's in nobody's short term political interest except the government. And they can't do it either because of the need to sound positive. "Going for growth" bla bla.
So there we go. The discourse is nonsense all round and it's hardcoded to stay that way.
There are economically easy answers - just follow the basic prescriptions of low taxes, low spending and light but effective regulation that you learn in first year macro at university leads to the optimal outcome.
Unfortunately they are politically difficult in the short term, so they don't get done.
Instead we get the politically easy answers of high spending, high taxes and ever more intrusive government that lead us to the doom loop we're currently in. And great politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Javier Milei who break out of that loop are vanishingly rare.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
How much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?
Farage's key aim is to make the public believe two falsehoods:
1. The country is becoming a shithole. 2. It's because of immigration.
Farage doesn't have to make people believe these, large numbers of them already do. For many life is getting worse, not better, and they see the country being flooded with people who don't speak their language or share their culture. Farage does not have to push that door, it's already open.
No, he's following the Trump playbook - the voters feel the country is going to the dogs and the usual crew have no answers, so convince them only drastic action from a Strong Man will fix it. I suspect it won't work as well here as it did in the US, but it might be enough.
Last night, Reform won three out of three contests (and three three town council seats, in Barrow-in-Furness).
What every one had in common was being Labour v Reform. Reform can beat Labour by (a) cannibalising the Conservative or local community party vote, in such seats (b) getting a small direct swing from Labour to themselves (c) turning out former non-voters. Labour can't pull in voters from other left wing parties for they don't exist in any numbers in such seats (save in Wales, and people vote Plaid for more than just left wing reasons).
Labour trying to chase Reform votes costs them votes to the Lib Dems, Greens, and Sultanas, but that is in different types of constituencies, not the Labour v Reform battlegrounds.
I think all in relatively low-income socially conservative areas, which are increasingly volatile politically. Swinging violently, in turn, to Boris-brand conservatism, back to Labour, and now on to the Faragists. It's a giddy rollercoaster ride.
Not all the UK, thank god, is like that, but enough is to provide chancers and opportunists with the prospect of a juicy, if short-lived, career in politics.
Personally, I think it was better when Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury were in charge.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Neither, in that sense, did Truss.
Like Truss, she is causing government borrowing to get more expensive. Because the markets (and foreign buyers of UK Government bonds) do not see a commitment to anything other than eternally growing debt.
This isn't "Evul Capitalists Attack Labour Government" - if you want to borrow money, you are priced on your likelihood to default. You can either spend less or tax more.
EDIT: Construction is already in recession.
There's no comparison between this situation and Truss. That was a self-inflicted short sharp crisis caused by political hubris and recklessness.
Fact is, we've had low growth since the 08 crash and our public finances are stressed due to the cost of that, and the pandemic, and the energy crisis. Now to compound matters interest rates are back at historical norms. We're off the drug of QE and superlow gilt servicing costs.
There are no easy answers, maybe no answers at all other than to move expectations more in line with reality. But that's in nobody's short term political interest except the government. And they can't do it either because of the need to sound positive. "Going for growth" bla bla.
So there we go. The discourse is nonsense all round and it's hardcoded to stay that way.
There are economically easy answers - just follow the basic prescriptions of low taxes, low spending and light but effective regulation that you learn in first year macro at university leads to the optimal outcome.
Unfortunately they are politically difficult in the short term, so they don't get done.
Instead we get the politically easy answers of high spending, high taxes and ever more intrusive government that lead us to the doom loop we're currently in. And great politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Javier Milei who break out of that loop are vanishingly rare.
...and then 2nd year macro introduces some new ideas which explain why it isn't quite as easy as that.
Farage's key aim is to make the public believe two falsehoods:
1. The country is becoming a shithole. 2. It's because of immigration.
Farage doesn't have to make people believe these, large numbers of them already do. For many life is getting worse, not better, and they see the country being flooded with people who don't speak their language or share their culture. Farage does not have to push that door, it's already open.
No, he's following the Trump playbook - the voters feel the country is going to the dogs and the usual crew have no answers, so convince them only drastic action from a Strong Man will fix it. I suspect it won't work as well here as it did in the US, but it might be enough.
Farage will soon be telling us the immigrants are eating the dogs...
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Neither, in that sense, did Truss.
Like Truss, she is causing government borrowing to get more expensive. Because the markets (and foreign buyers of UK Government bonds) do not see a commitment to anything other than eternally growing debt.
This isn't "Evul Capitalists Attack Labour Government" - if you want to borrow money, you are priced on your likelihood to default. You can either spend less or tax more.
EDIT: Construction is already in recession.
There's no comparison between this situation and Truss. That was a self-inflicted short sharp crisis caused by political hubris and recklessness.
Fact is, we've had low growth since the 08 crash and our public finances are stressed due to the cost of that, and the pandemic, and the energy crisis. Now to compound matters interest rates are back at historical norms. We're off the drug of QE and superlow gilt servicing costs.
There are no easy answers, maybe no answers at all other than to move expectations more in line with reality. But that's in nobody's short term political interest except the government. And they can't do it either because of the need to sound positive. "Going for growth" bla bla.
So there we go. The discourse is nonsense all round and it's hardcoded to stay that way.
There are economically easy answers - just follow the basic prescriptions of low taxes, low spending and light but effective regulation that you learn in first year macro at university leads to the optimal outcome.
Unfortunately they are politically difficult in the short term, so they don't get done.
Instead we get the politically easy answers of high spending, high taxes and ever more intrusive government that lead us to the doom loop we're currently in. And great politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Javier Milei who break out of that loop are vanishingly rare.
Ironically, Farage is probably a believer in that prescription. But his voter coalition would be totally intolerant of such an approach. A Reform government really would be a spectacular shambles.
I just asked Google AI if it's possible to have a white meat mixed grill. It said yes and told me that such a grill could include pork chops, which I'm pretty sure is red meat.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
How much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?
This government doesn't have to deal with Covid, the energy crisis and the cost of living crisis.
Thank God. We'd be utterly screwed if their activity to date is anything to go by.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
It's down for several reasons. There was always going to be a washing out of a pandemic-related blip in student numbers, we were past the initial big volumes from the Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, so Starmer is merely lucky to inherit some of that. Sunak's late changes in visa rules have had an impact, so again Starmer is inheriting that, although here you can argue that Starmer has made choices that have had an effect, in that he chose to leave Sunak's new rules in place.
Ultimately, what we see time and again, is that politicians are generally rewarded and blamed for what happens while they're in office, even if their actions in office were not causal. Immigration is down and will continue going down. Labour's messaging will be clear: "You wanted immigration to come down. Immigration has come down." (Meanwhile, Farage and the populist right will just make up stories and cherrypick numbers to construct an alternative narrative, of course.)
Farage's key aim is to make the public believe two falsehoods:
1. The country is becoming a shithole. 2. It's because of immigration.
Farage doesn't have to make people believe these, large numbers of them already do. For many life is getting worse, not better, and they see the country being flooded with people who don't speak their language or share their culture. Farage does not have to push that door, it's already open.
No, he's following the Trump playbook - the voters feel the country is going to the dogs and the usual crew have no answers, so convince them only drastic action from a Strong Man will fix it. I suspect it won't work as well here as it did in the US, but it might be enough.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Neither, in that sense, did Truss.
Like Truss, she is causing government borrowing to get more expensive. Because the markets (and foreign buyers of UK Government bonds) do not see a commitment to anything other than eternally growing debt.
This isn't "Evul Capitalists Attack Labour Government" - if you want to borrow money, you are priced on your likelihood to default. You can either spend less or tax more.
EDIT: Construction is already in recession.
There's no comparison between this situation and Truss. That was a self-inflicted short sharp crisis caused by political hubris and recklessness.
Fact is, we've had low growth since the 08 crash and our public finances are stressed due to the cost of that, and the pandemic, and the energy crisis. Now to compound matters interest rates are back at historical norms. We're off the drug of QE and superlow gilt servicing costs.
There are no easy answers, maybe no answers at all other than to move expectations more in line with reality. But that's in nobody's short term political interest except the government. And they can't do it either because of the need to sound positive. "Going for growth" bla bla.
So there we go. The discourse is nonsense all round and it's hardcoded to stay that way.
Pretty much - expect the current government is doing slow motion Truss.
Part of it is an inability to think and act. It's all about the process. Starmer appears to be a rules engine that takes the law as input and doesn't compute that he is actually supposed to be modifying the rules....
It's hard to imagine that Churchill or Attlee would have reacted to a judge redefining "family" to mean friends and next door neighbours with a shrug. They'd have had legislation in parliament by breakfast and an interview without coffee for the judge (with the Lord Chancellor) by tea.....
Can you give examples of Churchill or Attlee doing something like that (rushing legislation into Parliament in response to a judge's ruling)?
Well, there is the example of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939, which was passed in a single day.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
There you are - get wossername in the cheap jeans to do the first toss.
Last night, Reform won three out of three contests (and three three town council seats, in Barrow-in-Furness).
What every one had in common was being Labour v Reform. Reform can beat Labour by (a) cannibalising the Conservative or local community party vote, in such seats (b) getting a small direct swing from Labour to themselves (c) turning out former non-voters. Labour can't pull in voters from other left wing parties for they don't exist in any numbers in such seats (save in Wales, and people vote Plaid for more than just left wing reasons).
Labour trying to chase Reform votes costs them votes to the Lib Dems, Greens, and Sultanas, but that is in different types of constituencies, not the Labour v Reform battlegrounds.
Labour will hopefully be deservedly kicked out of power in the Senedd next year. When it happens there will be lessons to be learned for both them and their replacement.
Labour will need to learn the lesson they haven’t learned after 18 years of opposition in Scotland; they are not entitled to power, the need to earn and deserve it. They will need positive policies to eventually return to power. Opposition without alternatives is not enough.
Plaid or Reform will need to learn the lesson the SNP learned between 2007 and 2014, and have since forgotten. The voters will be lending them their trust, and they will need to govern by consensus. This may be harder for Reform than for Plaid. They will also need to learn lessons from the Lib Dems in 2010. Don’t break your manifesto promises.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
How do you think the players feel about this?
Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
I just asked Google AI if it's possible to have a white meat mixed grill. It said yes and told me that such a grill could include pork chops, which I'm pretty sure is red meat.
I just asked Google AI if it's possible to have a white meat mixed grill. It said yes and told me that such a grill could include pork chops, which I'm pretty sure is red meat.
I just asked Google AI if it's possible to have a white meat mixed grill. It said yes and told me that such a grill could include pork chops, which I'm pretty sure is red meat.
Depends if you're a scientist or chef, apparently. In fact quite a bit of poultry would count as red meat on scientific grounds of high myoglobin content and primarily aerobic operation, in contrast to the primarily anaerobic, low-myoglobin breast meat of a chicken. Red meat would include the thigh and hip musculature of primarily groundliving birds such as pheasant and chicken, and all of a pigeon because it uses its wings a lot, so the breast is also red meat.
Yesterdays Reform victories were not just a landslide in seats, it is scale of their majorities that astound. Generally the only areas that seem capable of resisting the Reform appeal are the affluent Lib Dem strongholds, but elsewhere that party is annihilated as well. One wonders how long that Lib Dem wall will remain. And now we have a Labour MP evicting tenants when she was the Homeless Minister. It all beggars belief. Corbyn will not have much impact except to cement Reform victories over Labour. Next week there is a by election in South Jesmond, usually either a Labour or Lib Dem ward, one might expect the Lib Dems to fancy their chances this year but I suspect Reform will shatter that belief.
I just asked Google AI if it's possible to have a white meat mixed grill. It said yes and told me that such a grill could include pork chops, which I'm pretty sure is red meat.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Neither, in that sense, did Truss.
Like Truss, she is causing government borrowing to get more expensive. Because the markets (and foreign buyers of UK Government bonds) do not see a commitment to anything other than eternally growing debt.
This isn't "Evul Capitalists Attack Labour Government" - if you want to borrow money, you are priced on your likelihood to default. You can either spend less or tax more.
EDIT: Construction is already in recession.
There's no comparison between this situation and Truss. That was a self-inflicted short sharp crisis caused by political hubris and recklessness.
Fact is, we've had low growth since the 08 crash and our public finances are stressed due to the cost of that, and the pandemic, and the energy crisis. Now to compound matters interest rates are back at historical norms. We're off the drug of QE and superlow gilt servicing costs.
There are no easy answers, maybe no answers at all other than to move expectations more in line with reality. But that's in nobody's short term political interest except the government. And they can't do it either because of the need to sound positive. "Going for growth" bla bla.
So there we go. The discourse is nonsense all round and it's hardcoded to stay that way.
There are economically easy answers - just follow the basic prescriptions of low taxes, low spending and light but effective regulation that you learn in first year macro at university leads to the optimal outcome.
Unfortunately they are politically difficult in the short term, so they don't get done.
Instead we get the politically easy answers of high spending, high taxes and ever more intrusive government that lead us to the doom loop we're currently in. And great politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Javier Milei who break out of that loop are vanishingly rare.
There's plenty of examples of success and failure amongst countries with big or small state approaches.
What you’re doing is dressing up your political leanings as objective commonsense.
Last night, Reform won three out of three contests (and three three town council seats, in Barrow-in-Furness).
What every one had in common was being Labour v Reform. Reform can beat Labour by (a) cannibalising the Conservative or local community party vote, in such seats (b) getting a small direct swing from Labour to themselves (c) turning out former non-voters. Labour can't pull in voters from other left wing parties for they don't exist in any numbers in such seats (save in Wales, and people vote Plaid for more than just left wing reasons).
Labour trying to chase Reform votes costs them votes to the Lib Dems, Greens, and Sultanas, but that is in different types of constituencies, not the Labour v Reform battlegrounds.
I think all in relatively low-income socially conservative areas, which are increasingly volatile politically. Swinging violently, in turn, to Boris-brand conservatism, back to Labour, and now on to the Faragists. It's a giddy rollercoaster ride.
Not all the UK, thank god, is like that, but enough is to provide chancers and opportunists with the prospect of a juicy, if short-lived, career in politics.
Personally, I think it was better when Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury were in charge.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Farage's key aim is to make the public believe two falsehoods:
1. The country is becoming a shithole. 2. It's because of immigration.
Farage doesn't have to make people believe these, large numbers of them already do. For many life is getting worse, not better, and they see the country being flooded with people who don't speak their language or share their culture. Farage does not have to push that door, it's already open.
No, he's following the Trump playbook - the voters feel the country is going to the dogs and the usual crew have no answers, so convince them only drastic action from a Strong Man will fix it. I suspect it won't work as well here as it did in the US, but it might be enough.
He is, yes. And of course there has to be a grain of something to be hyperbolated into the falsehood.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
That would mean the DfE couldn't keep repeating that silly lie that VAT on private school fees will raise £1.8 billion that will be spent in state schools though.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Yesterdays Reform victories were not just a landslide in seats, it is scale of their majorities that astound. Generally the only areas that seem capable of resisting the Reform appeal are the affluent Lib Dem strongholds, but elsewhere that party is annihilated as well. One wonders how long that Lib Dem wall will remain. And now we have a Labour MP evicting tenants when she was the Homeless Minister. It all beggars belief. Corbyn will not have much impact except to cement Reform victories over Labour. Next week there is a by election in South Jesmond, usually either a Labour or Lib Dem ward, one might expect the Lib Dems to fancy their chances this year but I suspect Reform will shatter that belief.
I think that affluent Lib Dem voting areas would be largely immune to voting Reform. I think that would also be true of Inner London, Inner Birmingham, Liverpool City, Welsh-speaking Wales, rural Scotland, and a number of university seats. That leaves about 450 seats that are - to varying degrees - vulnerable to Reform.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
I agree - it's fragile. And I'm not sure whether the Govt have a glass jaw on this, which we literally cannot afford.
The can't give in the the Drs on this further claim. So larger reform may be indicated - but that will require both political will and diplomacy. Reform of the profession may need to be on the table.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
If the Tory party dies, you get Reform.
There's this "progressive" dream that a political system can be established in which the battle is Labour v Lib Dem, or Labour v Green/Sultanas, but that leaves 47% of the electorate looking for a different political home.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
That would mean the DfE couldn't keep repeating that silly lie that VAT on private school fees will raise £1.8 billion that will be spent in state schools though.
*pauses*
*thinks hard*
You're right, it's a brilliant idea.
Hang on, increasing income tax and the applicability of NI reduces people's income ergo spending power, deflating the economy ... and it hasn't been stated what would be done with higher rate tax bands. If one is simply increasing tax take at lower incomes then that's no better than relying on VAT before, which hit the poorer people on the whole.
Offered not in a critical mood but in the constructively critical sense.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
That would mean the DfE couldn't keep repeating that silly lie that VAT on private school fees will raise £1.8 billion that will be spent in state schools though.
*pauses*
*thinks hard*
You're right, it's a brilliant idea.
Hang on, increasing income tax and the applicability of NI reduces people's income ergo spending power, deflating the economy ... and it hasn't been stated what would be done with higher rate tax bands. If one is simply increasing tax take at lower incomes then that's no better than relying on VAT before, which hit the poorer people on the whole.
Offered not in a critical mood but in the constructively critical sense.
Lots of people pay no income tax, so moving from VAT to income tax benefits the poorest people.
Having fired the BLS stats chief, it is a matter of the purest coincidence that Trump has now 'discovered' that Biden was fiddling the jobs figures (in his time off from being senile, or fabricating Epstein evidence against Trump, etc).
Moore*: They overestimated job creation during the Biden administration. That is a huge error.
Trump: It might not have been an error. That is the bad part. I think they did it purposely.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
How do you think the players feel about this?
Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
It's designed to degrade and humiliate them so I can see why they are not laughing.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
I agree - it's fragile. And I'm not sure whether the Govt have a glass jaw on this, which we literally cannot afford.
The can't give in the the Drs on this further claim. So larger reform may be indicated - but that will require both political will and diplomacy. Reform of the profession may need to be on the table.
Bonus:
There's a further whole slew of areas where I think they are sloping shoulders on things that need to be done.
Water companies and dealing with random sets of entitled cowboys digging up our roads and not repairing competently are two of them. But the second requires Local Highways Authorities to be tackled quite sharply, and sans Louise Haigh they are being timid on that.
Plus the extended agenda I debate here about roads & road safety. They could do worse than copy Blair on that, and set a long term target, and do the necessary.
Having fired the BLS stats chief, it is a matter of the purest coincidence that Trump has now 'discovered' that Biden was fiddling the jobs figures (in his time off from being senile, or fabricating Epstein evidence against Trump, etc).
Moore*: They overestimated job creation during the Biden administration. That is a huge error.
Trump: It might not have been an error. That is the bad part. I think they did it purposely.
Having fired the BLS stats chief, it is a matter of the purest coincidence that Trump has now 'discovered' that Biden was fiddling the jobs figures (in his time off from being senile, or fabricating Epstein evidence against Trump, etc).
Moore*: They overestimated job creation during the Biden administration. That is a huge error.
Trump: It might not have been an error. That is the bad part. I think they did it purposely.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
How do you think the players feel about this?
Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
It's designed to degrade and humiliate them so I can see why they are not laughing.
Of course. But the best, possibly the only way to deal with the assholes would be to lean into it.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
There's nothing boring about intelligent informed commentary free of partisan axe-grinding.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
How do you think the players feel about this?
Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
It's designed to degrade and humiliate them so I can see why they are not laughing.
Quite. If your partner, sister or daughter was a top pro in a sport and this sort of thing was happening you'd be pissed.
It's just an extension of the toxic incel culture that has come to dominate some parts of the internet and society. PB is a very male forum sometimes.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
If the Tory party dies, you get Reform.
There's this "progressive" dream that a political system can be established in which the battle is Labour v Lib Dem, or Labour v Green/Sultanas, but that leaves 47% of the electorate looking for a different political home.
I can't call that either.
Which faction of the Reform voting coalition would dominate ultimately?
What happens if we get PR somewhere in the middle of all the confusion?
(Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force is denying early retirement to all transgender service members with between 15 and 18 years of military service, opting instead to kick them out with no retirement benefits, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump sum payments as they walk out the door, the Aug. 4 memo says. https://x.com/phildstewart/status/1953520699806462259
Trump announced he’ll sit with Putin even if the Russian president declines to meet with Zelenskyy — breaking from the administration’s earlier stance.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
If you offset the tax reduction in VAT with additional taxes on income what makes you think that there would be a 1% increase in GDP? The tax burden is not going to fall in those circumstances and I am not seeing a stimulus.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
If you offset the tax reduction in VAT with additional taxes on income what makes you think that there would be a 1% increase in GDP? The tax burden is not going to fall in those circumstances and I am not seeing a stimulus.
We could also tell Trump that we've reduced tariffs, as he thinks VAT is the same thing.
TL;DW: it's cr@p, and orders of magnitude away from what was initially promised. Note also: Tesla, with all their alleged self-driving expertise, rely on human drivers on what is an almost totally closed system.
A story that might trigger changes. A boy walking out of a hospital is run down and killed by a bus. He was only 4 so more needs to be known, but hospital entrances are very dodgy places traffic-safety wise - everyone is frustrated and impatient, and they are designed to be open not with "pass through security" setups.
Police were called following a report of a crash outside the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate at about 16:00 BST on Thursday.
The boy has been named locally as Zaahir Jan.
He was taken inside the hospital but was confirmed dead a short while later. His next of kin has been informed.
Kent Police said the boy left the hospital on foot before the crash happened.
Eyewitness Gillian Murphy, a patient at the hospital, said: "It was very busy with cars, and the bus was having trouble getting through. Next thing I knew, he was under the bus."
Trump announced he’ll sit with Putin even if the Russian president declines to meet with Zelenskyy — breaking from the administration’s earlier stance.
In a world where the US can no longer be relied on as a military ally, Ukraine's continuing survival is essential to Europe's security.
I would put it that Europe has a strategic interest in Russia's aggression not being rewarded, but yes. We need to stand firm with Ukraine and not allow them to be bullied by Trump just so he can claim some sort of a win or a Nobel Peace prize or whatever.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
If you offset the tax reduction in VAT with additional taxes on income what makes you think that there would be a 1% increase in GDP? The tax burden is not going to fall in those circumstances and I am not seeing a stimulus.
More consumption, less saving. There's your stimulus (in theory).
(Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force is denying early retirement to all transgender service members with between 15 and 18 years of military service, opting instead to kick them out with no retirement benefits, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump sum payments as they walk out the door, the Aug. 4 memo says. https://x.com/phildstewart/status/1953520699806462259
What is the 'rationale' / excuse behind this move?
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
IIRC among the first acts of the Conservatives in 1979 were to increase VAT considerably and reduce the top rate of income tax. So "ordinary folk" paid more and wealthier people had more to spend.
I think there is a good case for reducing the rate of VAT and increasing the rate of income tax. This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b. But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points. This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions. Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes. So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
That would mean the DfE couldn't keep repeating that silly lie that VAT on private school fees will raise £1.8 billion that will be spent in state schools though.
*pauses*
*thinks hard*
You're right, it's a brilliant idea.
Hang on, increasing income tax and the applicability of NI reduces people's income ergo spending power, deflating the economy ... and it hasn't been stated what would be done with higher rate tax bands. If one is simply increasing tax take at lower incomes then that's no better than relying on VAT before, which hit the poorer people on the whole.
Offered not in a critical mood but in the constructively critical sense.
Very good points.
So increasing income tax by 5% for basic and higher rates will raise about £40b. But it will reduce GDP by about 0.8% losing about £7b in all taxes. So net gain is £33b against a net loss of £23b in reducing VAT from 20% to 15%. We are £10b to the good.
Politically, the cut in VAT will have an immediate positive effect on the cost of living. The income tax increases will be less visible and skewed to the better off. I'd do it. I'd also remove the cliff edges while I'm at it.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
Having fired the BLS stats chief, it is a matter of the purest coincidence that Trump has now 'discovered' that Biden was fiddling the jobs figures (in his time off from being senile, or fabricating Epstein evidence against Trump, etc).
Moore*: They overestimated job creation during the Biden administration. That is a huge error.
Trump: It might not have been an error. That is the bad part. I think they did it purposely.
Not a single reporter asked Trump why then the final jobs report before the election was dreadful for the Democrats .
As Paul Krugman said earlier the tiny handful of economists out of the whole profession who think tariffs wont f the US economy all work for Trump or GOP.
(Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force is denying early retirement to all transgender service members with between 15 and 18 years of military service, opting instead to kick them out with no retirement benefits, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump sum payments as they walk out the door, the Aug. 4 memo says. https://x.com/phildstewart/status/1953520699806462259
What is the 'rationale' / excuse behind this move?
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
I'm firmly of the belief it would be easier and more practical to actually build the infrastructure than remove people, though that would require getting people to no longer be able to object to getting infrastructure built.
But even if you want net emigration how would you get it to practically happen with people who've got the golden ticket of coming here from third world countries to voluntarily depart?
Far more likely is net emigration being caused by skilled people departing to other first world nations, while cutting immigration below that replacement rate.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
Uni academics, who have suffered a similar decline in salary to medics, are rejoicing in 1.4% this year. Mainly thanks to the governments (plural) refusing to allow inflation matching increases in student fees.
(Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force is denying early retirement to all transgender service members with between 15 and 18 years of military service, opting instead to kick them out with no retirement benefits, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump sum payments as they walk out the door, the Aug. 4 memo says. https://x.com/phildstewart/status/1953520699806462259
What is the 'rationale' / excuse behind this move?
They're trans.
Its bigotry pure and simple. Whatever one believes about trans people they are just people and have the same rights as everyone else.
But then we have the rejection of basic science in the US right now with vaccines, so frankly, much as I like Americans (my three Texan students leave today), the country voted for this shit, they need to vote it out ASAP.
A story that might trigger changes. A boy walking out of a hospital is run down and killed by a bus. He was only 4 so more needs to be known, but hospital entrances are very dodgy places traffic-safety wise - everyone is frustrated and impatient, and they are designed to be open not with "pass through security" setups.
Police were called following a report of a crash outside the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate at about 16:00 BST on Thursday.
The boy has been named locally as Zaahir Jan.
He was taken inside the hospital but was confirmed dead a short while later. His next of kin has been informed.
Kent Police said the boy left the hospital on foot before the crash happened.
Eyewitness Gillian Murphy, a patient at the hospital, said: "It was very busy with cars, and the bus was having trouble getting through. Next thing I knew, he was under the bus."
Without speculating too much I assume the boy was not on his own? My two year old is a nightmare for wanting to run off, no matter how often we try to teach him about car parks etc. We used to use reins but clearly thats a bit much for a four year old.
Trump announced he’ll sit with Putin even if the Russian president declines to meet with Zelenskyy — breaking from the administration’s earlier stance.
In a world where the US can no longer be relied on as a military ally, Ukraine's continuing survival is essential to Europe's security.
I would put it that Europe has a strategic interest in Russia's aggression not being rewarded, but yes. We need to stand firm with Ukraine and not allow them to be bullied by Trump just so he can claim some sort of a win or a Nobel Peace prize or whatever.
It goes rather further than that. A Russia which defeated and occupied large parts of Ukraine would be a far more serious future threat to the rest of Europe than one whose invasion failed.
Forget 'rewarding', it's a simple matter of territory, industrial capacity and manpower.
A deal with Putin is worth nothing to Europe in future reassurance. He's reneged on the vast majority of agreements he has signed, and his territorial ambitions are quite open.
While the US was a reliable member of NATO, that might not have mattered. It does now.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
Uni academics, who have suffered a similar decline in salary to medics, are rejoicing in 1.4% this year. Mainly thanks to the governments (plural) refusing to allow inflation matching increases in student fees.
My Trust is asking for voluntary redundancies, but hasn't ruled out compulsory ones. They are aiming for managerial and admin grades, but I am not convinced this is working. The plan has me doing the data entry that was formerly done be the receptionist. I don't mind, but it means that I see fewer patients.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
Uni academics, who have suffered a similar decline in salary to medics, are rejoicing in 1.4% this year. Mainly thanks to the governments (plural) refusing to allow inflation matching increases in student fees.
My Trust is asking for voluntary redundancies, but hasn't ruled out compulsory ones. They are aiming for managerial and admin grades, but I am not convinced this is working. The plan has me doing the data entry that was formerly done be the receptionist. I don't mind, but it means that I see fewer patients.
And your hourly rate for the data entry work is significantly higher than a receptionists would be!
BTW - do you have a view on email vs post for patient letters/appointments? I only ask as we had an appointment letter come through for our son the day after the appointment. Now the delay is down to Royal Mail (under pressure in our town - we get a big bundle of post about once a week) but why use post at all?
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
How do you think the players feel about this?
Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
It's designed to degrade and humiliate them so I can see why they are not laughing.
Of course. But the best, possibly the only way to deal with the assholes would be to lean into it.
How is a professional athlete supposed to "lean into it" when some arsehole throws a rubber cock at her? What's the ideal leaning into it course of action?
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
Of course Labour won't do that. If people want a far right nativist approach to immigration they'll have to elect a far right nativist party to government.
TL;DW: it's cr@p, and orders of magnitude away from what was initially promised. Note also: Tesla, with all their alleged self-driving expertise, rely on human drivers on what is an almost totally closed system.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
Of course Labour won't do that. If people want a far right nativist approach to immigration they'll have to elect a far right nativist party to government.
I really don't think it is 'far right' to say that a significant number of the millions who have arrived on these shores very recently, to the obvious detriment of our society and economy, should be returned. It's simple common sense.
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
How do you think the players feel about this?
Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
It's designed to degrade and humiliate them so I can see why they are not laughing.
Of course. But the best, possibly the only way to deal with the assholes would be to lean into it.
How is a professional athlete supposed to "lean into it" when some arsehole throws a rubber cock at her? What's the ideal leaning into it course of action?
I suggested upthread: make it official and get some celeb to do a dildo chuck before the game.
They've tried banning bags, and doing entry searches, but that's clearly futile.
You could try legal action, but MAGA would probably get that reversed.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
Of course Labour won't do that. If people want a far right nativist approach to immigration they'll have to elect a far right nativist party to government.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
Of course Labour won't do that. If people want a far right nativist approach to immigration they'll have to elect a far right nativist party to government.
I really don't think it is 'far right' to say that a significant number of the millions who have arrived on these shores very recently, to the obvious detriment of our society and economy, should be returned. It's simple common sense.
If mass deportations of legal immigrants on account of culture and ethnicity isn't far right I'm not sure what is. But whatever, I'm agreeing with the point that Labour won't be doing it. There's a valid debate about what 'Labour values' are but they certainly don't stretch to that.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
Uni academics, who have suffered a similar decline in salary to medics, are rejoicing in 1.4% this year. Mainly thanks to the governments (plural) refusing to allow inflation matching increases in student fees.
My Trust is asking for voluntary redundancies, but hasn't ruled out compulsory ones. They are aiming for managerial and admin grades, but I am not convinced this is working. The plan has me doing the data entry that was formerly done be the receptionist. I don't mind, but it means that I see fewer patients.
And your hourly rate for the data entry work is significantly higher than a receptionists would be!
BTW - do you have a view on email vs post for patient letters/appointments? I only ask as we had an appointment letter come through for our son the day after the appointment. Now the delay is down to Royal Mail (under pressure in our town - we get a big bundle of post about once a week) but why use post at all?
We do text notifications when people have a mobile number on file, but the default is paper. Last week I got a paper bill and reminder dated 2 weeks apart in the same post.
Part of Wes Streetings 10 year plan for the NHS is that sort of thing, also electronic booking and AI led responses to queries about appointments and rebooking. I think the vision is to do it via the NHS App rather than open emails.
In principle I have no problems, but there are issues around confidentiality with emails, the same reason hospitals show as "unknown" on phones, and we aren't allowed to leave answerphone messages. Also there are significant issues about equity of access for communities and patients who lack those IT skills and infrastructure.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
Uni academics, who have suffered a similar decline in salary to medics, are rejoicing in 1.4% this year. Mainly thanks to the governments (plural) refusing to allow inflation matching increases in student fees.
My Trust is asking for voluntary redundancies, but hasn't ruled out compulsory ones. They are aiming for managerial and admin grades, but I am not convinced this is working. The plan has me doing the data entry that was formerly done be the receptionist. I don't mind, but it means that I see fewer patients.
And your hourly rate for the data entry work is significantly higher than a receptionists would be!
BTW - do you have a view on email vs post for patient letters/appointments? I only ask as we had an appointment letter come through for our son the day after the appointment. Now the delay is down to Royal Mail (under pressure in our town - we get a big bundle of post about once a week) but why use post at all?
We do text notifications when people have a mobile number on file, but the default is paper. Last week I got a paper bill and reminder dated 2 weeks apart in the same post.
Part of Wes Streetings 10 year plan for the NHS is that sort of thing, also electronic booking and AI led responses to queries about appointments and rebooking. I think the vision is to do it via the NHS App rather than open emails.
In principle I have no problems, but there are issues around confidentiality with emails, the same reason hospitals show as "unknown" on phones, and we aren't allowed to leave answerphone messages. Also there are significant issues about equity of access for communities and patients who lack those IT skills and infrastructure.
Especially as being poor, old and/or disabled is apt to correlate positively with the need for health service interventions of whatever kind.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
Of course Labour won't do that. If people want a far right nativist approach to immigration they'll have to elect a far right nativist party to government.
I really don't think it is 'far right' to say that a significant number of the millions who have arrived on these shores very recently, to the obvious detriment of our society and economy, should be returned. It's simple common sense.
If mass deportations of legal immigrants on account of culture and ethnicity isn't far right I'm not sure what is. But whatever, I'm agreeing with the point that Labour won't be doing it. There's a valid debate about what 'Labour values' are but they certainly don't stretch to that.
Millions of the Boriswave people do not have indefinite leave to remain
We are entirely within our rights - including our human rights - to deny them this. That’s the point of it. They are not yet legal citizens or migrants with rights to stay
If we deny them ILR they will have to go home. Do you object to that?
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
I'm not ready to call that yet. What would success be and how would we - and voters - detect it?
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
NHS waiting lists are being held hostage for much higher pay. If the nurses get screwed but the surgeons and consultants get large pay rises, that could negate the politics of reduced waiting lists.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
Point of order. The Consultants and Surgeons are not striking, it is the Resident Docors (formerly Junior Doctors).
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
Uni academics, who have suffered a similar decline in salary to medics, are rejoicing in 1.4% this year. Mainly thanks to the governments (plural) refusing to allow inflation matching increases in student fees.
My Trust is asking for voluntary redundancies, but hasn't ruled out compulsory ones. They are aiming for managerial and admin grades, but I am not convinced this is working. The plan has me doing the data entry that was formerly done be the receptionist. I don't mind, but it means that I see fewer patients.
And your hourly rate for the data entry work is significantly higher than a receptionists would be!
BTW - do you have a view on email vs post for patient letters/appointments? I only ask as we had an appointment letter come through for our son the day after the appointment. Now the delay is down to Royal Mail (under pressure in our town - we get a big bundle of post about once a week) but why use post at all?
We do text notifications when people have a mobile number on file, but the default is paper. Last week I got a paper bill and reminder dated 2 weeks apart in the same post.
Part of Wes Streetings 10 year plan for the NHS is that sort of thing, also electronic booking and AI led responses to queries about appointments and rebooking. I think the vision is to do it via the NHS App rather than open emails.
In principle I have no problems, but there are issues around confidentiality with emails, the same reason hospitals show as "unknown" on phones, and we aren't allowed to leave answerphone messages. Also there are significant issues about equity of access for communities and patients who lack those IT skills and infrastructure.
Especially as being poor, old and/or disabled is apt to correlate positively with the need for health service interventions of whatever kind.
I'd love to have NHS app being the default for communicating with me. I'm fine with paper being sent to those who opt for it.
We do worry an awful lot about patient information, yet the postman can rip open any letter from the NHS to a patient and read it. We trust them not to. Answer phone to a mobile should be fine too.
@Leon I replied to your last post in reply to me yesterday, but I think you had gone by then. Just trying to keep the con cordial going.
And just to add, in support of your anecdotes, my anecdote of evidence of things getting worse in the UK. My next door neighbours are Russian. One is a concert pianist the other is a lead violinist. They aren't here much as they travel the world and have homes in France and Switzerland and they left again today. Yesterday they commented to me that they thought things were changing for the worse here and they notice the change because it is not gradual for them. Now you know I don't feel that, so I asked why. They came up with two things. Pot holes in the road are much worse than before and Sainsbury's not having a fresh food counter anymore. I had forgotten that had disappeared and now I miss it (plus the pot holes are a pain).
@Leon I replied to your last post in reply to me yesterday, but I think you had gone by then. Just trying to keep the con cordial going.
And just to add, in support of your anecdotes, my anecdote of evidence of things getting worse in the UK. My next door neighbours are Russian. One is a concert pianist the other is a lead violinist. They aren't here much as they travel the world and have homes in France and Switzerland and they left again today. Yesterday they commented to me that they thought things were changing for the worse here and they notice the change because it is not gradual for them. Now you know I don't feel that, so I asked why. They came up with two things. Pot holes in the road are much worse and Sainsbury's not having a fresh food counter anymore. I had forgotten that had disappeared and now I miss it (plus the pot holes are a pain).
First world problems. Besides - why are they shopping in Sainsbury's? Isn't Sainsbuy's role to keep the scum out of Waitrose?
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Fiddling whilst London burns. She's crashed the economy properly. To show Liz how its done
She has not 'crashed the economy'.
Some people need to remember the mantra "you lost- get over it".
There's a degree of general anger on the right about there being a Labour government. Just the fact of it. Because it's hardly a big socialist experiment, is it.
The biggest threat to Farage is that Starmer succeeds. And Farage has very little agency in that, which I think is why his core political activities are shit-shovelling and shit-stirring - notably him and all his colleagues constantly (husk off) lying about what is happening to try and create a febrile summer. It's not a kind word, but it is what they do.
Conversely the noisier and more desperate Farage becomes, the greater risks he faces in his own political base. For example, he has weakened his vetting process, but that will let more knuckle draggers inside the sandcastle, but may cause some of the decents to exit from the other door. His support base is tribal and fissiparous, and he knows it. And he has a compliant mass media largely onside ignoring real problems, but that could change. He is walking a tightrope, or perhaps several tightropes.
Each time Starmer reduces immigration, or their policies lock up an trafficking gang, or reduce the number of hotels in use, or anything else, it washes away a bit more of Farage's sandcastle of rhetoric.
The same goes for the other areas - NHS, Local Government, Economy, Defence and so on.
I think as a society we want an inclusive, pleasant place to be rather than the hell hole Farage wants to pretend exists.
The question is how far Starmer's Govt can succeed and make progress, and how much of that will be perceived, and to what extent Farage's smokescreen can have effect.
The problem that you (and I given my antipathy towards Farage) have is that Starmer is showing no signs of 'succeeding'. His policies do not appear to be having any impact on migration nor does he appear to be making any progress in any other policy areas.
Now on one level, with my strange (by most people's standards) view of migration as a positive thing, I am not particularly sad that Starmer is not succeeding. But on another level of wanting competent Government answerable to the people - perhaps the only reason to consider Starmer as a better choice than Sunak at the last election - he is failing utterly. And that failure makes a Reform victory and its consequences all the more likely.
There has been a big fall in immigration. Arguably, that's due to a range of factors unrelated to Stamer's choices, but immigration is definitely way down during the period he is in charge.
It is down but nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date
In the year ending December 2024, net migration to the UK was provisionally estimated at 431,000, a significant decrease from the 860,000 recorded in the previous year. This reduction is primarily attributed to a drop in immigration, particularly among non-EU nationals arriving for work and study, and an increase in emigration, notably by international students.
"...nothing to do with Starmer's actions to date"
But on his watch.
As with the economy, the government gets to take the good with the bad.
And as far as Farage and his mob are concerned, were immigration to be (say) below 200k by the time of the next election, and the numbers in asylum hotels down to a nugatory figure, then that fox would be truly shot.
No it wouldn't, people don't want a drop in net migration, they want net emigration of third world legal immigrants and deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and fake asylum seekers. Labour will not achieve any of these goals. The UK needs a period of net zero migration or a few years of net emigration, the population is beyond the limit of what our infrastructure and housing can reasonably provide for and the arrivals don't generate enough economic activity that allows for construction of new infrastructure to maintain their presence.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
Of course Labour won't do that. If people want a far right nativist approach to immigration they'll have to elect a far right nativist party to government.
And they will
Well fine (although I doubt it). But the point is, stop making out Labour should do it. Tightening the rules, reducing the inward numbers, discouraging illegal routes, that's a fair enough ask and will probably happen; the rest requires a genuine far right mandate from a general election. In 2029.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
Yes, this is the thing no mainstream politician has the balls to say - not even Farage, really. Fixing the effects of years of mass immigration doesn't just mean 'stopping the boats', it will require deportations. Lots of them. A net outflow of 200,000+ people a year is about the level needed to make a visible difference.
It sounds like a lot, but 200,000 a year is approximately three plane loads per day. That's very possible if the government were committed to doing it, which they're not. And if the civil service co-operated, which they won't.
So the social pressure continues to grow and eventually something will give.
Trump got this. He understood mass deportations are the only way to clean up uncontrolled immigration. But the shambolic incompetence and gratuitous thuggery of ICE has undermined the process and ensured the problem won't be fixed no matter who's in the White House.
@Leon I replied to your last post in reply to me yesterday, but I think you had gone by then. Just trying to keep the con cordial going.
And just to add, in support of your anecdotes, my anecdote of evidence of things getting worse in the UK. My next door neighbours are Russian. One is a concert pianist the other is a lead violinist. They aren't here much as they travel the world and have homes in France and Switzerland and they left again today. Yesterday they commented to me that they thought things were changing for the worse here and they notice the change because it is not gradual for them. Now you know I don't feel that, so I asked why. They came up with two things. Pot holes in the road are much worse than before and Sainsbury's not having a fresh food counter anymore. I had forgotten that had disappeared and now I miss it (plus the pot holes are a pain).
I am wholly convinced the public realm is in decline. You can see it in photos of Britain 10. 20, years ago. Less litter, less graffiti, better streets, better street furniture. And yes a more homogeneous populace - if that’s your thing
Of course if you go back 40-50 years then london was a toilet. These things tend to go in cycles
But beyond the visible decay is a general sense of gloom and malaise which is arguably worse
The WNBA has been providing quite a lot of amusement this summer. There was the “protest” by the two teams in the all star game where they wore t-shirts saying “pay us what you owe us” which just ended up with the finances being torn apart showing what a loss the women’s game made and how it was covered by the men’s game. The players didn’t understand why they aren’t being paid the same as the men, whose game makes about $2b a year profit even after their huge wages.
This then went to get people to look at the viewing figures which were abysmal - when they threatened to strike my favourite comment was “tens of people will be upset if this happens”.
The dildo throwing has just been a childish reaction to the nonsense over the last few weeks.
The WNBA should lean into it, and make it an official pre-game thing.
Invite Vance or someone to throw the first dildo.
It’s going to keep happening unless they do lean into it. Trying to take it seriously just encourages the jokers.
One player wrote on Twitter to please stop doing this because someone will get hurt, the top reply was “Stop playing basketball on the dildo range”, with 35,000 likes. https://x.com/red1bangarang/status/1951495276717384126
Which celeb/politician would actually be up for it ?
Good question. They should really be able to get a few retired basketballers to try and throw one in from halfway.
As for politicans, most of the younger Congresscritters on both sides have been seen to have a sense of humour at some point, having grown up around social media. They’d definitely need to get both sides engaged though, otherwise it would become as political as a jeans advert.
How do you think the players feel about this?
Right now most of them are having a severe sense of humour failure about it, which is why it keeps happening.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
It's designed to degrade and humiliate them so I can see why they are not laughing.
Of course. But the best, possibly the only way to deal with the assholes would be to lean into it.
How is a professional athlete supposed to "lean into it" when some arsehole throws a rubber cock at her? What's the ideal leaning into it course of action?
Presumably find the childish (*^$£^*% who threw it, bend him over and insert said rubber implement in his frenulum.
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
How much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?
Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown left
@Leon I replied to your last post in reply to me yesterday, but I think you had gone by then. Just trying to keep the con cordial going.
And just to add, in support of your anecdotes, my anecdote of evidence of things getting worse in the UK. My next door neighbours are Russian. One is a concert pianist the other is a lead violinist. They aren't here much as they travel the world and have homes in France and Switzerland and they left again today. Yesterday they commented to me that they thought things were changing for the worse here and they notice the change because it is not gradual for them. Now you know I don't feel that, so I asked why. They came up with two things. Pot holes in the road are much worse than before and Sainsbury's not having a fresh food counter anymore. I had forgotten that had disappeared and now I miss it (plus the pot holes are a pain).
I am wholly convinced the public realm is in decline. You can see it in photos of Britain 10. 20, years ago. Less litter, less graffiti, better streets, better street furniture. And yes a more homogeneous populace - if that’s your thing
Of course if you go back 40-50 years then london was a toilet. These things tend to go in cycles
But beyond the visible decay is a general sense of gloom and malaise which is arguably worse
Of course, except perhaps in certain cities (Manchester? Leicester?).
But wtf do you expect when local government expenditure is cut by a third in 15 years (England, Scotland) such that there is essentially nothing except statutory expenditure possible?
You can see it in any slightly out of the way Google Streetview - just compare the weeds growing out of the pavement in 2022 with those in 2009.
It's not really "is it your thing?"; it's "what do we want?"
Last night, Reform won three out of three contests (and three three town council seats, in Barrow-in-Furness).
What every one had in common was being Labour v Reform. Reform can beat Labour by (a) cannibalising the Conservative or local community party vote, in such seats (b) getting a small direct swing from Labour to themselves (c) turning out former non-voters. Labour can't pull in voters from other left wing parties for they don't exist in any numbers in such seats (save in Wales, and people vote Plaid for more than just left wing reasons).
Labour trying to chase Reform votes costs them votes to the Lib Dems, Greens, and Sultanas, but that is in different types of constituencies, not the Labour v Reform battlegrounds.
I think all in relatively low-income socially conservative areas, which are increasingly volatile politically. Swinging violently, in turn, to Boris-brand conservatism, back to Labour, and now on to the Faragists. It's a giddy rollercoaster ride.
Not all the UK, thank god, is like that, but enough is to provide chancers and opportunists with the prospect of a juicy, if short-lived, career in politics.
Personally, I think it was better when Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury were in charge.
Of course back then only 60% of men had the vote, so the electorate was more middle class and as women did not have the vote all male
@Leon I replied to your last post in reply to me yesterday, but I think you had gone by then. Just trying to keep the con cordial going.
And just to add, in support of your anecdotes, my anecdote of evidence of things getting worse in the UK. My next door neighbours are Russian. One is a concert pianist the other is a lead violinist. They aren't here much as they travel the world and have homes in France and Switzerland and they left again today. Yesterday they commented to me that they thought things were changing for the worse here and they notice the change because it is not gradual for them. Now you know I don't feel that, so I asked why. They came up with two things. Pot holes in the road are much worse than before and Sainsbury's not having a fresh food counter anymore. I had forgotten that had disappeared and now I miss it (plus the pot holes are a pain).
I am wholly convinced the public realm is in decline. You can see it in photos of Britain 10. 20, years ago. Less litter, less graffiti, better streets, better street furniture. And yes a more homogeneous populace - if that’s your thing
Of course if you go back 40-50 years then london was a toilet. These things tend to go in cycles
But beyond the visible decay is a general sense of gloom and malaise which is arguably worse
Of course, except perhaps in certain cities (Manchester? Leicester?).
But wtf do you expect when local government expenditure is cut by a third in 15 years (England, Scotland) such that there is essentially nothing except statutory expenditure possible?
You can see it in any slightly out of the way Google Streetview - just compare the weeds growing out of the pavement in 2022 with those in 2009.
Seems to be loadsamoney to put in cycle lanes, which then don't get used very much....
I expect the two child benefit cap will go in November mostly funded by an increase in gambling taxes . This no 10 will hope will reduce the appeal of Your party .
An increase in gambling taxes is low hanging fruit and won’t be controversial for the vast majority of the public .
Good morning
Another unpopular measure according to the polls, and does nothing to address Reeves 'all my very own deep hole' in the public finances
Why doesn't she focus on all the popular ways to increase taxes and cut spending? It's exasperating.
Truth is that income tax has to rise, but she cannot do that because of her idiotic pre election promises
Also you do not raise taxes to address a huge hole in the public finances and use some of that tax raising to create another spending commitment
Do you think whoever is leading the tory party at the next GE will do into it promising to raise income tax because I don't.
Labour are a high tax high spend government and it is not in their DNA to cut spending
Conservatives are low tax low spending and I would expect a conservative government to reduce corporation tax, encourage wealth creation and abolish IHT on farmers. I would also expect a review of all net zero subsidies
Why on earth would you expect them to do that? Most of that is at odds with their time in office - particularly on renewables and farmers.
Any party that is focussed on a pensioner voting cohort like the Conservatives is going to high tax, high spend.
Cameron and Osborne certainly cut spending as a percentage of gdp and cut tax at all income levels, including a big inheritance tax cut.
Kemi has said she will take an axe to spending, especially welfare spending and net zero spending etc and at one stage even proposed means testing the triple lock
How much did the national debt increase during the last Conservative government?
Because of lockdown, Cameron and Osborne certainly cut it compared to what Brown left
A creative answer.
"I'm going to move the origin of the graph over .... THERE !"
(It is true that the deficit did decline gradually, but at what cost to the country, investment, science base, quality of public footpaths, applying appropriate taxes to appriopriate items and 101 other things?).
Comments
What every one had in common was being Labour v Reform. Reform can beat Labour by (a) cannibalising the Conservative or local community party vote, in such seats (b) getting a small direct swing from Labour to themselves (c) turning out former non-voters. Labour can't pull in voters from other left wing parties for they don't exist in any numbers in such seats (save in Wales, and people vote Plaid for more than just left wing reasons).
Labour trying to chase Reform votes costs them votes to the Lib Dems, Greens, and Sultanas, but that is in different types of constituencies, not the Labour v Reform battlegrounds.
That is not to say that Reeves's tax and spend policy hasn't been chaotic and haphazard, and the pre-election no new taxes guarantee was ridiculous.
We are this morning eulogising Farage as a vehicle of change, yet Farage's two key interventions have been Brexit and confirming his belief that the Truss/Kwarteng budget was "the most Conservative budget since 1986". Neither of which has improved our economy.
I have long been accused of being part of the unhinged anti-Johnson PB herd, and hands up, if there was an anti-Johnson herd I would have been part of it. The anti-Johnson herd however wasn't a patch on the unhinged anti- Starmer-Labour PB herd. @FrancisUrquhart tees up a Telegraph link and the rest pile in.
Unfortunately they are politically difficult in the short term, so they don't get done.
Instead we get the politically easy answers of high spending, high taxes and ever more intrusive government that lead us to the doom loop we're currently in. And great politicians like Margaret Thatcher or Javier Milei who break out of that loop are vanishingly rare.
No, he's following the Trump playbook - the voters feel the country is going to the dogs and the usual crew have no answers, so convince them only drastic action from a Strong Man will fix it. I suspect it won't work as well here as it did in the US, but it might be enough.
Not all the UK, thank god, is like that, but enough is to provide chancers and opportunists with the prospect of a juicy, if short-lived, career in politics.
Personally, I think it was better when Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury were in charge.
However bad, things can always get worse.
maybe?
Thank God. We'd be utterly screwed if their activity to date is anything to go by.
Ultimately, what we see time and again, is that politicians are generally rewarded and blamed for what happens while they're in office, even if their actions in office were not causal. Immigration is down and will continue going down. Labour's messaging will be clear: "You wanted immigration to come down. Immigration has come down." (Meanwhile, Farage and the populist right will just make up stories and cherrypick numbers to construct an alternative narrative, of course.)
On a related issue, I see the BoE intends to publish savers for having too many savings.
I think Malmesbury's reply is more relevant. They didn't do this sort of thing, because those sorts of judicial rulings didn't happen much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_13davmxPb4
(This is Jimmy Clanton, 1962 ... when @OldKingCole was on a Vespa not a Tramper.)
Labour will need to learn the lesson they haven’t learned after 18 years of opposition in Scotland; they are not entitled to power, the need to earn and deserve it. They will need positive policies to eventually return to power. Opposition without alternatives is not enough.
Plaid or Reform will need to learn the lesson the SNP learned between 2007 and 2014, and have since forgotten. The voters will be lending them their trust, and they will need to govern by consensus. This may be harder for Reform than for Plaid. They will also need to learn lessons from the Lib Dems in 2010. Don’t break your manifesto promises.
If they’d leaned into the joke the first time it happened, it would have been a one and done.
Or where would it be as an insult?
Generally the only areas that seem capable of resisting the Reform appeal are the affluent Lib Dem strongholds, but elsewhere that party is annihilated as well. One wonders how long that Lib Dem wall will remain.
And now we have a Labour MP evicting tenants when she was the Homeless Minister. It all beggars belief.
Corbyn will not have much impact except to cement Reform victories over Labour.
Next week there is a by election in South Jesmond, usually either a Labour or Lib Dem ward, one might expect the Lib Dems to fancy their chances this year but I suspect Reform will shatter that belief.
What you’re doing is dressing up your political leanings as objective commonsense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf4dX21Fzmw
This would help poorer people and stimulate the economy.
Reducing VAT from 20% to 15% would cost the Treasury about £40b.
But it would reduce the rate of inflation for one year by 2.5% points.
This would save £7b in inflation related benefits such as pensions.
Furthermore the increase in spending power would stimulate the economy increasing GDP by about 1% and giving the Treasury an extra £10b in taxes.
So the net cost would be about £23b.
This could be more than recouped by applying NI to pensioners (+£5b) and increasing basic rate of income tax from 20% to 25% (+£25b)
Wish I were Chancellor!
We can see certain clear successes - NHS Waiting Lists down from 7.64 million to 7.3 million in the first 12 months (assuming published numbers of -0.03 million for June and July which is trend). That's big and is turning around a 15 year trend, but imo not big enough to be obvious.
I'm actually seeing extra police. Also defence expenditure, and expenditure in local government, are ticking up. Various metrics are improving very slowly.
I think "more money in my pocket" is perhaps better than expected, but detectible for eg minimum wagers rather than the PB demographic.
There are good things that have been / are being done that will require time to see (perhaps too much time). IMO Local Gov reorganisation is one of these, which will be valuable over time; we desperately need well resourced, capable local goverment. One of the reason I would be pleased to see the Tory Party die is because I don't believe any more there is any chance of them ever believing in investing in the public realm. I had hopes, but they are going backwards and may turn into mini-me Farages.
At the next election everyone will still be grumpy. It's imo whether it is "they've done a bit, and it is working for me a bit, so we can give them a bit more time", or "failure, let's try something completely different".
But most of the new legislation is hardly in, never mind having time to have an impact. And the Tories are still rushing in circles round the drain.
So my core view is ... we can't know yet. Which is boring.
*pauses*
*thinks hard*
You're right, it's a brilliant idea.
Waiting lists should be coming down anyway, absent a big uptick in a nasty variant of COvid - they reason they were so badly bent out of shape in the first place.
The can't give in the the Drs on this further claim. So larger reform may be indicated - but that will require both political will and diplomacy. Reform of the profession may need to be on the table.
There's this "progressive" dream that a political system can be established in which the battle is Labour v Lib Dem, or Labour v Green/Sultanas, but that leaves 47% of the electorate looking for a different political home.
I presume that means that now he's done nothing, he will stop
Offered not in a critical mood but in the constructively critical sense.
Moore*: They overestimated job creation during the Biden administration. That is a huge error.
Trump: It might not have been an error. That is the bad part. I think they did it purposely.
Moore: You may well be right..
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1953553342892032304
*The Project 2025 guy
https://bsky.app/profile/thatneilmartin.bsky.social/post/3lvv43sjlk225
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/08/rupert-lowe-gives-charity-1000-after-taking-its-rowers-for-immigrants
There's a further whole slew of areas where I think they are sloping shoulders on things that need to be done.
Water companies and dealing with random sets of entitled cowboys digging up our roads and not repairing competently are two of them. But the second requires Local Highways Authorities to be tackled quite sharply, and sans Louise Haigh they are being timid on that.
Plus the extended agenda I debate here about roads & road safety. They could do worse than copy Blair on that, and set a long term target, and do the necessary.
Why would you even ask ?
But the best, possibly the only way to deal with the assholes would be to lean into it.
It's just an extension of the toxic incel culture that has come to dominate some parts of the internet and society. PB is a very male forum sometimes.
Which faction of the Reform voting coalition would dominate ultimately?
What happens if we get PR somewhere in the middle of all the confusion?
These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump sum payments as they walk out the door, the Aug. 4 memo says.
https://x.com/phildstewart/status/1953520699806462259
https://x.com/politico/status/1953755472147759109
In a world where the US can no longer be relied on as a military ally, Ukraine's continuing survival is essential to Europe's security.
Police were called following a report of a crash outside the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate at about 16:00 BST on Thursday.
The boy has been named locally as Zaahir Jan.
He was taken inside the hospital but was confirmed dead a short while later. His next of kin has been informed.
Kent Police said the boy left the hospital on foot before the crash happened.
Eyewitness Gillian Murphy, a patient at the hospital, said: "It was very busy with cars, and the bus was having trouble getting through. Next thing I knew, he was under the bus."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ylxv7wd33o
Swiss politicians are seeking to cancel an order of three dozen F-35A fighter jets from US defence conglomerate Lockheed Martin
https://x.com/business/status/1953387285023494441
Spain has shelved plans to purchase F-35 fighter aircraft, Spanish newspaper El País reported today.
https://x.com/POLITICOEurope/status/1953059380980568181
Together that is 60-80 aircraft.
Realistically we need to see emigration of between 2 and 3 million unskilled migrants and dependents that arrived over the last 5 years with only 1m or so highly skilled migrants to replace them from culturally aligned countries. I highly doubt Labour will be able to do that, they don't have the stomach to send those people home that should never have been invited by Boris.
So increasing income tax by 5% for basic and higher rates will raise about £40b.
But it will reduce GDP by about 0.8% losing about £7b in all taxes.
So net gain is £33b against a net loss of £23b in reducing VAT from 20% to 15%.
We are £10b to the good.
Politically, the cut in VAT will have an immediate positive effect on the cost of living.
The income tax increases will be less visible and skewed to the better off.
I'd do it.
I'd also remove the cliff edges while I'm at it.
Consultants got 4%, so a fraction over CPI, and incidentally not yet paid. I am told that it is in this month's pay, backdated to April.
But even if you want net emigration how would you get it to practically happen with people who've got the golden ticket of coming here from third world countries to voluntarily depart?
Far more likely is net emigration being caused by skilled people departing to other first world nations, while cutting immigration below that replacement rate.
But then we have the rejection of basic science in the US right now with vaccines, so frankly, much as I like Americans (my three Texan students leave today), the country voted for this shit, they need to vote it out ASAP.
A Russia which defeated and occupied large parts of Ukraine would be a far more serious future threat to the rest of Europe than one whose invasion failed.
Forget 'rewarding', it's a simple matter of territory, industrial capacity and manpower.
A deal with Putin is worth nothing to Europe in future reassurance. He's reneged on the vast majority of agreements he has signed, and his territorial ambitions are quite open.
While the US was a reliable member of NATO, that might not have mattered. It does now.
BTW - do you have a view on email vs post for patient letters/appointments? I only ask as we had an appointment letter come through for our son the day after the appointment. Now the delay is down to Royal Mail (under pressure in our town - we get a big bundle of post about once a week) but why use post at all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfU53PjeQMk
I doubt that.
They've tried banning bags, and doing entry searches, but that's clearly futile.
You could try legal action, but MAGA would probably get that reversed.
The foreign secretary and JD Vance have just finished some carp fishing
- and did not catch anything
https://x.com/tamcohen/status/1953801345284161994
Part of Wes Streetings 10 year plan for the NHS is that sort of thing, also electronic booking and AI led responses to queries about appointments and rebooking. I think the vision is to do it via the NHS App rather than open emails.
In principle I have no problems, but there are issues around confidentiality with emails, the same reason hospitals show as "unknown" on phones, and we aren't allowed to leave answerphone messages. Also there are significant issues about equity of access for communities and patients who lack those IT skills and infrastructure.
We are entirely within our rights - including our human rights - to deny them this. That’s the point of it. They are not yet legal citizens or migrants with rights to stay
If we deny them ILR they will have to go home. Do you object to that?
We do worry an awful lot about patient information, yet the postman can rip open any letter from the NHS to a patient and read it. We trust them not to. Answer phone to a mobile should be fine too.
And just to add, in support of your anecdotes, my anecdote of evidence of things getting worse in the UK. My next door neighbours are Russian. One is a concert pianist the other is a lead violinist. They aren't here much as they travel the world and have homes in France and Switzerland and they left again today. Yesterday they commented to me that they thought things were changing for the worse here and they notice the change because it is not gradual for them. Now you know I don't feel that, so I asked why. They came up with two things. Pot holes in the road are much worse than before and Sainsbury's not having a fresh food counter anymore. I had forgotten that had disappeared and now I miss it (plus the pot holes are a pain).
https://www.vinted.co.uk/items/6833014663-tommy-robinson-book
It sounds like a lot, but 200,000 a year is approximately three plane loads per day. That's very possible if the government were committed to doing it, which they're not. And if the civil service co-operated, which they won't.
So the social pressure continues to grow and eventually something will give.
Trump got this. He understood mass deportations are the only way to clean up uncontrolled immigration. But the shambolic incompetence and gratuitous thuggery of ICE has undermined the process and ensured the problem won't be fixed no matter who's in the White House.
Of course if you go back 40-50 years then london was a toilet. These things tend to go in cycles
But beyond the visible decay is a general sense of gloom and malaise which is arguably worse
But wtf do you expect when local government expenditure is cut by a third in 15 years (England, Scotland) such that there is essentially nothing except statutory expenditure possible?
You can see it in any slightly out of the way Google Streetview - just compare the weeds growing out of the pavement in 2022 with those in 2009.
It's not really "is it your thing?"; it's "what do we want?"
"I'm going to move the origin of the graph over .... THERE !"
(It is true that the deficit did decline gradually, but at what cost to the country, investment, science base, quality of public footpaths, applying appropriate taxes to appriopriate items and 101 other things?).