Skip to content

Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 12,624
edited August 8 in General
Reform & The Greens, the parties of Coldplay fans – politicalbetting.com

Looked at the other way Reform also do even better than average among those who themselves have cheated among more than one person. The Greens also record their highest score with this group, but the Tories perform most poorly with them. pic.twitter.com/GQn42rUox2

Read the full story here

«13

Comments

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 44,878
    Did the survey actually specify the kind of cheating?

    It could have been cheating at golf or Monopoly for all I knew till I read the last para of the header.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,401
    Two of the last three, you say?

    Well, there's Boris, obviously, but you can't mean Rishi and you can't mean TMay, so who is...

    OH HELL, YOU MEAN TRUSS. I had forgotten about her premiership and now you have gone and reminded me.

    I'm off to find a quiet dark place to calm down...
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,537
    edited August 8
    Kemi at least has never cheated, whether on an exam or otherwise.

    The poll does suggest Reformers are relatively liberal in their personal lives at least
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 56,112
    Carnyx said:

    Did the survey actually specify the kind of cheating?

    It could have been cheating at golf or Monopoly for all I knew till I read the last para of the header.

    The video of Trump cheating at Turnberry when his caddy threw a ball out the back of his hand was hilarious. But I don't think that this is what the header has in mind.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,401
    HYUFD said:

    Kemi at least has never cheated, whether on an exam or otherwise.

    The poll does suggest Reformers are relatively liberal in their personal lives at least

    Depends, does hacking into a rival politician's website count as cheating?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/09/bafflement-over-tory-mps-admission-she-hacked-harriet-harmans-website
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 86,801
    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 86,801
    edited August 8

    HYUFD said:

    Kemi at least has never cheated, whether on an exam or otherwise.

    The poll does suggest Reformers are relatively liberal in their personal lives at least

    Depends, does hacking into a rival politician's website count as cheating?

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/09/bafflement-over-tory-mps-admission-she-hacked-harriet-harmans-website
    The word..."hacking"...is doing some heavy lifting in article.

    Badenoch gained access to Harman’s website by guessing the credentials (she later gave an anonymous interview revealing that Harman’s username and password were “harriet” and “harman”),

    In the eyes of the law no difference, but I presumed Kemi was doing something clever.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 56,112

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 86,801
    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    Those bat tunnels won't build themselves.
  • TazTaz Posts: 20,272
    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707
    How do we know what the Silent Generation think about anything though?
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 56,112
    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    Labour have also told us that their last budget set up public finances for the Parliament. I am not sure they are completely reliable in their assurances.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 86,801
    edited August 8
    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,537
    edited August 8
    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    Yes but Oxford has always been the home of lost causes, from being Charles Ists HQ in the Civil War to overwhelmingly Remain in the EU referendum and given 69% of voters overall back the OSA age verification requirement for pornographic and adult websites

    https://yougov.co.uk/technology/articles/52693-how-have-britons-reacted-to-age-verification
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 123,249
    edited August 8

    Two of the last three, you say?

    Well, there's Boris, obviously, but you can't mean Rishi and you can't mean TMay, so who is...

    OH HELL, YOU MEAN TRUSS. I had forgotten about her premiership and now you have gone and reminded me.

    I'm off to find a quiet dark place to calm down...

    How about a nice photograph of Nigel Farage to calm you down...
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 123,249

    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.

    Somebody compared GPT5 to having all the self confidence of a privately educated guy but like one of those low IQ chaps Harrow lets in.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 86,801

    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.

    Somebody compared GPT5 to having all the self confidence of a privately educated guy but like one of those low IQ chaps Harrow lets in.
    I have not seen a launch this bad since Rishi decided to stand in the rain to announce the GE campaign.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 123,249
    Carnyx said:

    Did the survey actually specify the kind of cheating?

    It could have been cheating at golf or Monopoly for all I knew till I read the last para of the header.

    The mise-en-scène of the other tweets confirms it is about adulterers like Boris Johnson and the King.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 123,249

    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.

    Somebody compared GPT5 to having all the self confidence of a privately educated guy but like one of those low IQ chaps Harrow lets in.
    I have not seen a launch this bad since Rishi decided to stand in the rain to announce the GE campaign.
    I don't know why but my mind reads GPT5 as GTA6 and I am hoping that doesn't suck.

    RIP productivity in June next year, what bellend thought it was useful to release it a few weeks before next year's world cup?
  • Daveyboy1961Daveyboy1961 Posts: 4,769

    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.

    Somebody compared GPT5 to having all the self confidence of a privately educated guy but like one of those low IQ chaps Harrow lets in.
    A kind of Tim, nice but Dim character?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 123,249

    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.

    Somebody compared GPT5 to having all the self confidence of a privately educated guy but like one of those low IQ chaps Harrow lets in.
    A kind of Tim, nice but Dim character?
    No, there's a type of privately educated guy who thinks he's brilliant/an expert in everything but actually knows sod all except their own field.

    Remember not all privately educated people are as modest and self effacing as me.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 11,485
    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 44,878
    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    One thing in Scotland - they do apparently try to have a steady-ish programme for rail electrification, to keep the teams together and working on and on. In great contrast to what happens in a country not a million km away. Or two, actually: Wales comes into it too, at least in terms of the main line to it rather than its administration .
  • tpfkartpfkar Posts: 1,579
    edited August 8
    I like the third graph, which shows the number of people who have been cheated on is about twice as large as the number who have done the cheating.

    Now I suppose a small number of people might have done a lot of cheating, but there's got to be an honesty gap in there somewhere. Boris can't be responsible for all of it.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 25,043
    kinabalu said:

    How do we know what the Silent Generation think about anything though?

    Perhaps they simply can't remember.

    So 25% of Britons have cheated but 45% have been cheated on. Hmmm, believe that if you like. Or perhaps some were cheating on their survey answers. Alternatively the Refukkers can blame the large gap between the two on pesky foreigners.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 6,846
    Sean_F said:

    If people favour polyamory, or an open marriage, all well and good.

    But, I do get disgusted by the kind of politician (usually a Conservative), who features his wife and children on election literature, before dumping them in favour of a younger model, or abandoning his wife when she develops cancer.

    IMHO, if they do that to those they are closest to, just imagine what they'll do to the voters.

    The worst thing about it is that when the story of their affair breaks you have to ingest loads of mind bleach to get rid of the image of some out of shape grim toad rogering away - I still have nightmares from the thought of David Mellor sweating and grunting away on Antonia de Sancha like Jaba the Hut having an epileptic fit.

    They say politics is showbiz for ugly people so until Salma Hayek or Sidney Sweeney are occupying the green benches I don’t want to have to imagine their sexual antics.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 44,878

    kinabalu said:

    How do we know what the Silent Generation think about anything though?

    Perhaps they simply can't remember.

    So 25% of Britons have cheated but 45% have been cheated on. Hmmm, believe that if you like. Or perhaps some were cheating on their survey answers. Alternatively the Refukkers can blame the large gap between the two on pesky foreigners.
    Perfectly possible if some of the 25% were serial cheaters.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 6,846
    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    How do we know what the Silent Generation think about anything though?

    Perhaps they simply can't remember.

    So 25% of Britons have cheated but 45% have been cheated on. Hmmm, believe that if you like. Or perhaps some were cheating on their survey answers. Alternatively the Refukkers can blame the large gap between the two on pesky foreigners.
    Perfectly possible if some of the 25% were serial cheaters.
    “We were on a break.”
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,835
    boulay said:

    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    How do we know what the Silent Generation think about anything though?

    Perhaps they simply can't remember.

    So 25% of Britons have cheated but 45% have been cheated on. Hmmm, believe that if you like. Or perhaps some were cheating on their survey answers. Alternatively the Refukkers can blame the large gap between the two on pesky foreigners.
    Perfectly possible if some of the 25% were serial cheaters.
    “We were on a break.”
    Tea served by Charlotte Owen?
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 74,835
    On topic:

    Which are the party of Radiohead fans?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 40,506
    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 39,341
    boulay said:

    Sean_F said:

    If people favour polyamory, or an open marriage, all well and good.

    But, I do get disgusted by the kind of politician (usually a Conservative), who features his wife and children on election literature, before dumping them in favour of a younger model, or abandoning his wife when she develops cancer.

    IMHO, if they do that to those they are closest to, just imagine what they'll do to the voters.

    The worst thing about it is that when the story of their affair breaks you have to ingest loads of mind bleach to get rid of the image of some out of shape grim toad rogering away - I still have nightmares from the thought of David Mellor sweating and grunting away on Antonia de Sancha like Jaba the Hut having an epileptic fit.

    They say politics is showbiz for ugly people so until Salma Hayek or Sidney Sweeney are occupying the green benches I don’t want to have to imagine their sexual antics.
    It’s pretty gruesome. IIRC, The Mellorphant Man suffers from halitosis.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 55,522
    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    Pro alien
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 40,506
    Carnyx said:

    kinabalu said:

    How do we know what the Silent Generation think about anything though?

    Perhaps they simply can't remember.

    So 25% of Britons have cheated but 45% have been cheated on. Hmmm, believe that if you like. Or perhaps some were cheating on their survey answers. Alternatively the Refukkers can blame the large gap between the two on pesky foreigners.
    Perfectly possible if some of the 25% were serial cheaters.
    Yes, the maths is 1.8 partners per cheater, it doesn't seem implausible. It's probably a lot higher considering how many affairs go unnoticed by partners even for years. One of my old managers was a serial womaniser and was married. We saw him go home (well a hotel I guess) with various women in bars on company nights out.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 6,281
    The results of the survey are good news for Mrs. Hyufd, Mrs. Casino and Mrs. DavidL, among others. Not so good for Mrs. Leon, but we knew that anyway, or Mrs. Owls.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 56,342
    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    As discussed here yesterday, it’s not just the money it’s the process and standards compliance. Which not only add to the time but add to the money too.

    I always used to refer to the fact that Dubai Airport’s Terminal 3 was built in the same time as Heathrow Terminal 5’s planning inquiry. Same scope of project, new buildings on an existing airfield with local access roads, but one place managed to build and open it before the other place stopped taking about it.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 55,611

    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.

    Somebody compared GPT5 to having all the self confidence of a privately educated guy but like one of those low IQ chaps Harrow lets in.
    I have not seen a launch this bad since Rishi decided to stand in the rain to announce the GE campaign.
    New Coke bad?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 56,342

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 40,506
    Sandpit said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
    Someone should start a book on how long it will take for the current supporters of this legislation to be caught with CSAM.

    That whole "you support Jimmy Savile" was such an over the top and weird reaction.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 56,342
    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,401
    Sean_F said:

    boulay said:

    Sean_F said:

    If people favour polyamory, or an open marriage, all well and good.

    But, I do get disgusted by the kind of politician (usually a Conservative), who features his wife and children on election literature, before dumping them in favour of a younger model, or abandoning his wife when she develops cancer.

    IMHO, if they do that to those they are closest to, just imagine what they'll do to the voters.

    The worst thing about it is that when the story of their affair breaks you have to ingest loads of mind bleach to get rid of the image of some out of shape grim toad rogering away - I still have nightmares from the thought of David Mellor sweating and grunting away on Antonia de Sancha like Jaba the Hut having an epileptic fit.

    They say politics is showbiz for ugly people so until Salma Hayek or Sidney Sweeney are occupying the green benches I don’t want to have to imagine their sexual antics.
    It’s pretty gruesome. IIRC, The Mellorphant Man suffers from halitosis.
    Is that why toes were involved, or am I misremembering my 1990s scandals?

    Not my personal scandals, obviously, you know what I mean.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,286

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    It's not so much that as the translation of slogan into policy with no planning stage. Part of the problem might be that parties changed their conferences into US-style rallies to hide any disagreements, but at least there used to be serious debates on policy before a bill was introduced into parliament.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118

    The plebs seem very unhappy with GPT5. Mobs of nerds armed with flaming torches demanding their GPT4o back.

    Somebody compared GPT5 to having all the self confidence of a privately educated guy but like one of those low IQ chaps Harrow lets in.
    A kind of Tim, nice but Dim character?
    No, there's a type of privately educated guy who thinks he's brilliant/an expert in everything but actually knows sod all except their own field.

    Remember not all privately educated people are as modest and self effacing as me.
    One issue is that "my own field" can become a silo where the person is locked in by their own experience and their own niche's values.

    Here's one from Midlands Connect. A ~10% bigger capacity on the M1J28 (ie 77k per day to 87k per day capacity), to be delivered in 15-20 years' time at a current cost of £40m. Alternatives - like "making it easier for walking / wheeling and cycling" get a one sentence ritual mention in one of many propaganda articles I have seen.

    But the bloody thing is STILL just a bigger traffic island with no accessible alternatives, blocking 30k people from walking to Macarthur Glen, with the sort of traffic increase that could likely be accounted for by actually making short local journeys practical by other modes - as is the Govt target.

    That's how Nottingham avoided any proposals for a LEZ - so much more was not by private vehicle that it did not need one. They even invoke a concept called transport-related social exclusion to support their projects, when the actual research on it shows TRSA is *caused* by the transport forms they promote.

    Providing alternatives normally brings returns 2-3x greater than making roads bigger, but they are prisoners of their silo. It's just another BLOB.

    https://alfreton.spiritof.uk/improvements-on-the-cards-for-junction-28/
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,286
    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    They've not even got the Savile bit right aiui. The argument seems to be that predatory adults lurk in online forums grooming children for sex. But that's not where the government has imposed age verification.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 27,086

    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    They've not even got the Savile bit right aiui. The argument seems to be that predatory adults lurk in online forums grooming children for sex. But that's not where the government has imposed age verification.
    Exactly. This is to stop angelic daughters of BBC producers from seeing nasty (but not illegal) stuff online.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118
    edited August 8

    Sean_F said:

    boulay said:

    Sean_F said:

    If people favour polyamory, or an open marriage, all well and good.

    But, I do get disgusted by the kind of politician (usually a Conservative), who features his wife and children on election literature, before dumping them in favour of a younger model, or abandoning his wife when she develops cancer.

    IMHO, if they do that to those they are closest to, just imagine what they'll do to the voters.

    The worst thing about it is that when the story of their affair breaks you have to ingest loads of mind bleach to get rid of the image of some out of shape grim toad rogering away - I still have nightmares from the thought of David Mellor sweating and grunting away on Antonia de Sancha like Jaba the Hut having an epileptic fit.

    They say politics is showbiz for ugly people so until Salma Hayek or Sidney Sweeney are occupying the green benches I don’t want to have to imagine their sexual antics.
    It’s pretty gruesome. IIRC, The Mellorphant Man suffers from halitosis.
    Is that why toes were involved, or am I misremembering my 1990s scandals?

    Not my personal scandals, obviously, you know what I mean.
    Was that not Fergie?

    Evidence (I have not used my photo yet today, and this is published in the UK):


    Wasn't Mellor the Chelsea Football Strip? But that part was fabricated by a newspaper iirc. God knows why anyone would want to be seen in a Chelsea Football Strip.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 86,801
    tlg86 said:

    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    They've not even got the Savile bit right aiui. The argument seems to be that predatory adults lurk in online forums grooming children for sex. But that's not where the government has imposed age verification.
    Exactly. This is to stop angelic daughters of BBC producers from seeing nasty (but not illegal) stuff online.
    Given all the stories I would be more worried about what the talent might show their daughters.
  • isamisam Posts: 42,310
    Starmer rode to power on a wave of public disgust at a Tory government where — as he repeatedly put it — it seemed like there was “one rule for them, another for everyone else”. Labour may feel that Tory accusations of “staggering hypocrisy” are, well, staggering hypocrisy. But there is no doubt about how corrosive it will be for Starmer if voters start to believe that Labour have become as sleazy and hypocritical as the last lot.

    After all, a party whose core argument is that they are all the same and all as bad as each other is leading in the polls. Once again, the person who will be happiest this morning is Nigel Farage.


    https://www.thetimes.com/article/475247cb-0a64-4abf-b491-3d8024a7597e?shareToken=307eb2771d99e220b5fd9cce9a3da54b
  • TazTaz Posts: 20,272

    tlg86 said:

    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    They've not even got the Savile bit right aiui. The argument seems to be that predatory adults lurk in online forums grooming children for sex. But that's not where the government has imposed age verification.
    Exactly. This is to stop angelic daughters of BBC producers from seeing nasty (but not illegal) stuff online.
    Given all the stories I would be more worried about what the talent might show their daughters.
    BBC Breakfast seems to have some issues too.
  • Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707
    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,836
    Taz said:

    tlg86 said:

    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    They've not even got the Savile bit right aiui. The argument seems to be that predatory adults lurk in online forums grooming children for sex. But that's not where the government has imposed age verification.
    Exactly. This is to stop angelic daughters of BBC producers from seeing nasty (but not illegal) stuff online.
    Given all the stories I would be more worried about what the talent might show their daughters.
    BBC Breakfast seems to have some issues too.
    If allegations are true of course. No idea if Naga Munchetty is a bully but I can imagine she might be different off air to on.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118
    This is one for @Leon when he does his next St Andrews Odyssey.

    I hear that St Andrews have introduced town wide 20mph limits on (I assume) residential roads.

    I'd be interested to hear if you notice anything.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707

    Taz said:

    tlg86 said:

    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    They've not even got the Savile bit right aiui. The argument seems to be that predatory adults lurk in online forums grooming children for sex. But that's not where the government has imposed age verification.
    Exactly. This is to stop angelic daughters of BBC producers from seeing nasty (but not illegal) stuff online.
    Given all the stories I would be more worried about what the talent might show their daughters.
    BBC Breakfast seems to have some issues too.
    If allegations are true of course. No idea if Naga Munchetty is a bully but I can imagine she might be different off air to on.
    She comes over as a bully on air to me.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 27,086
    kinabalu said:

    Taz said:

    tlg86 said:

    Taz said:

    DavidL said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    My son made it back from Oxford yesterday. They don't agree on much there but the view that the Online Safety Act is the worst piece of legislation in modern times seems completely universal and cross party.
    But labour have told us you’re either pro the OSA or pro Predator. 🤔
    They've not even got the Savile bit right aiui. The argument seems to be that predatory adults lurk in online forums grooming children for sex. But that's not where the government has imposed age verification.
    Exactly. This is to stop angelic daughters of BBC producers from seeing nasty (but not illegal) stuff online.
    Given all the stories I would be more worried about what the talent might show their daughters.
    BBC Breakfast seems to have some issues too.
    If allegations are true of course. No idea if Naga Munchetty is a bully but I can imagine she might be different off air to on.
    She comes over as a bully on air to me.
    You can never be sure how these people behave away from the cameras, but I know what you mean about her on-screen persona.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 44,878
    edited August 8
    MattW said:

    This is one for @Leon when he does his next St Andrews Odyssey.

    I hear that St Andrews have introduced town wide 20mph limits on (I assume) residential roads.

    I'd be interested to hear if you notice anything.

    It's out on a limb, pretty much, and has a tiny population compared with Camden!
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,361

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
    Classic Process State

    1) attempt to control reality with linear rule sets
    2) reality is non-linear. Chaotic.
    3) when 1 fails, try more (1)

    Send every politician this -


  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 19,401
    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    Seems likely, given where there is more money sloshing around. (See also, the quality and quality of plants, coffee, biscuits etc cetera in each sector.)

    Indeed, I wonder if some of the "you could cut X% of public sector staff at random and things would run better" talk comes from people working in sectors that do massively over spend and over recruit in the boom times.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118
    edited August 8
    Carnyx said:

    MattW said:

    This is one for @Leon when he does his next St Andrews Odyssey.

    I hear that St Andrews have introduced town wide 20mph limits on (I assume) residential roads.

    I'd be interested to hear if you notice anything.

    It's out on a limb, pretty much, and has a tiny population compared with Camden!
    Indeedy. I'm hearing fairly good things about 20mph and Pavement Parking ban progress in Scotland, albeit at a fairly "slow but sure" pace.

    Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, St Andrews, Dunblane, Dundee, various in Fife and Perthshire ...

    Also School Streets.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 56,342
    edited August 8
    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 15,090
    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    In local Government, on the rare occasions there was money, there was huge pressure to spend it and spend it quickly. That often led to poor decisions and a "spade in the ground" mentality on building projects.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 19,836

    Sandpit said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
    PJ O’Rourke observed that a major problem with child proof lids on medication bottles, was not having a child around to open one for you.
    My two year old can open his supposedly child proof paracetamol but my 18 year old uni students cannot.

    Not sure what that tells us.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,361

    Sandpit said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
    PJ O’Rourke observed that a major problem with child proof lids on medication bottles, was not having a child around to open one for you.
    My two year old can open his supposedly child proof paracetamol but my 18 year old uni students cannot.

    Not sure what that tells us.
    The your uni students are young adults and PJ O’Rourke was right.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707
    edited August 8

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
    When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "

    Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707
    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    In local Government, on the rare occasions there was money, there was huge pressure to spend it and spend it quickly. That often led to poor decisions and a "spade in the ground" mentality on building projects.
    Ditto with the NHS sometimes.
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 11,485
    edited August 8
    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    In local Government, on the rare occasions there was money, there was huge pressure to spend it and spend it quickly. That often led to poor decisions and a "spade in the ground" mentality on building projects.
    That's not necessarily a bad thing if you've got all the planning sorted and the business case completed. Having a national portfolio of small <£100 million investments and their associated IRRs for when the interest rates drops to the appropriate level is what we need (with a weighting for the inverse of real hourly wage to "level up" the country).

    I think this already exists somewhere but it needs to be independent of the Treasury and the funds automatically allocated.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    Except it is a drag on everyone else and in 08/09 led to an enormous direct call on public money.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,361
    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.

    Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118
    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    In local Government, on the rare occasions there was money, there was huge pressure to spend it and spend it quickly. That often led to poor decisions and a "spade in the ground" mentality on building projects.
    Yes - a constant problem. Also to do with "funding available for one year and must be spent by April".

    The successful Councils are those with 101 95% Ready to Roll projects that can be topped and tailed and rapidly submitted.

    One of the improvements coming from Mr Starmer is multiyear (3 iirc) funding settlements.

    In the last round of active travel funding, which was due to be multiyear, it was about half way through the spending period before the Department (DFT?) had got off their arse enough to even identify what the amount of funding available was going to be.
  • kinabalu said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
    When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "

    Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
    If the government doesn't implement some kind of restriction on VPNs before they get kicked out I will happily and publicly acknowledge I was wrong. But the alternative scenario is to admit the OSA is a failure, repeal it and look like a bunch of ridiculous fools. Can't see this government being in any way willing to do that.

    The only way I see a VPN ban not happening is if some organisation - Wikipedia possibly - refuses to comply with the OSA and then takes uk.gov to the ECHR and wins. But that will take more years than this administration has left.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,537
    Sandpit said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
    It does stop young children accidentally stumbling on adult and pornographic material however
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118
    Eabhal said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    In local Government, on the rare occasions there was money, there was huge pressure to spend it and spend it quickly. That often led to poor decisions and a "spade in the ground" mentality on building projects.
    That's not necessarily a bad thing if you've got all the planning sorted and the business case completed. Having a national portfolio of small £100 million investments and their associated IRRs for when the interest rates drops to the appropriate level is what we need (with a weighting for the inverse of real hourly wage to "level up" the country).

    I think this already exists somewhere but it needs to be independent of the Treasury and the funds automatically allocated.
    I think the sort of problem that happens is that you don't get the funding until you have the planning in place, and guess what you need to have to pay for the planning application .... ?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707
    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
    It does stop young children accidentally stumbling on adult and pornographic material however
    Yes. The porn mags didn't used to be displayed with the comics, did they.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,361
    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
    It does stop young children accidentally stumbling on adult and pornographic material however
    Have you actually met a recent 14 year old boy?

    All the lads of that age, I know, help their parents sort out “the IT” at home.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,286

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.

    Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
    Were bank bailouts left to shareholders in your reality?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,361

    kinabalu said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
    When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "

    Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
    If the government doesn't implement some kind of restriction on VPNs before they get kicked out I will happily and publicly acknowledge I was wrong. But the alternative scenario is to admit the OSA is a failure, repeal it and look like a bunch of ridiculous fools. Can't see this government being in any way willing to do that.

    The only way I see a VPN ban not happening is if some organisation - Wikipedia possibly - refuses to comply with the OSA and then takes uk.gov to the ECHR and wins. But that will take more years than this administration has left.
    {firing-up-the-palantir-gesture}

    1) they will ban VPNs
    2) companies say they will have to stop working in the U.K.
    3) the government will come up with VPN registration - even trying to demand control from the VPN provider if what the customer is doing
    4) after multiple rounds of unworkable legislation, it turns out that at least one of the licensed VPNs is run by terrorists. Another is run by organised crime. At least one is owned by Donald Trump.

    {staggers back from palantir}
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707

    kinabalu said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
    When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "

    Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
    If the government doesn't implement some kind of restriction on VPNs before they get kicked out I will happily and publicly acknowledge I was wrong. But the alternative scenario is to admit the OSA is a failure, repeal it and look like a bunch of ridiculous fools. Can't see this government being in any way willing to do that.

    The only way I see a VPN ban not happening is if some organisation - Wikipedia possibly - refuses to comply with the OSA and then takes uk.gov to the ECHR and wins. But that will take more years than this administration has left.
    I'm no tech expert but I'd have thought there are possibilities between do nothing (about VPNs accessing 'nasty' sites) and a ban (the chance of which imo is close to zero).
  • TresTres Posts: 2,995
    when I was 13 I had a few copies of the Daily Sport to deliver in my paper round
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,361

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.

    Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
    Were bank bailouts left to shareholders in your reality?
    Sadly, no. Too Big Too Fail.

    What we need is more, and deeper failure.

    So : You run a bank. It fails.

    1) You can kill your self - your family is provided for.
    2) You can live the rest of your life on benefits in Bedford, after 20 years in prison.
    3) You can escape by sea. And be murdered by financially sophisticated, sociopathic whalers off the coast of Norway.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,537

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.

    Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
    Were bank bailouts left to shareholders in your reality?
    Sadly, no. Too Big Too Fail.

    What we need is more, and deeper failure.

    So : You run a bank. It fails.

    1) You can kill your self - your family is provided for.
    2) You can live the rest of your life on benefits in Bedford, after 20 years in prison.
    3) You can escape by sea. And be murdered by financially sophisticated, sociopathic whalers off the coast of Norway.
    Not all banks were too big to fail, the US government allowed Lehmans to go bankrupt with no bailout
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    Seems likely, given where there is more money sloshing around. (See also, the quality and quality of plants, coffee, biscuits etc cetera in each sector.)

    Indeed, I wonder if some of the "you could cut X% of public sector staff at random and things would run better" talk comes from people working in sectors that do massively over spend and over recruit in the boom times.
    Yes, a lot of the waste was because of simply that - money oozing all over the place.

    Money was at the same time venerated as the only god and yet treated as having no value.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,537

    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    https://www.ft.com/content/09c88dde-687e-47c7-ba9d-7ad5048e2bc7

    The blind leading the blind.

    LOL, none of them have the slightest bit of a clue!

    Do none of them have a 14-year-old son, who could tell them that it takes about three minutes to work around the OSA provisions on adult content?
    It does stop young children accidentally stumbling on adult and pornographic material however
    Have you actually met a recent 14 year old boy?

    All the lads of that age, I know, help their parents sort out “the IT” at home.
    I am talking more 5-12 year olds.

    This is an ideal issue for Labour, libertarians like many on here hate it but libertarians would never vote Labour anyway.

    However parents of school age children in marginals might vote Labour again and Starmer can now present himself as on their side while Farage is on the side of the pornographers
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118
    edited August 8
    Whilst I'm on 20mph limits, I see that Wrexham have now reinstated 30 limits on perhaps 45 of their highways, which is 52 "sections".

    Claude says they have 320 "roads" in Wrexham, so that is something like 14-15% on the place in Wales which had the most to do.

    They seem to have used the opportunity to get the Welsh Govt to pay for the remova of old signs and signposts that had been left in place from years ago, and to pay for lots of brand new ones. For a place that was quite aggressive in implementing 20mph limits, a rollback to only 80-85% now at 20mph seems OK - that will leave connector and through routes at 30mph, and give the benefits everywhere else.

    https://news.wrexham.gov.uk/review-of-20mph-speed-limits-update/

    ( @Big_G_NorthWales ?)
  • No_Offence_AlanNo_Offence_Alan Posts: 5,164
    boulay said:

    Sean_F said:

    If people favour polyamory, or an open marriage, all well and good.

    But, I do get disgusted by the kind of politician (usually a Conservative), who features his wife and children on election literature, before dumping them in favour of a younger model, or abandoning his wife when she develops cancer.

    IMHO, if they do that to those they are closest to, just imagine what they'll do to the voters.

    The worst thing about it is that when the story of their affair breaks you have to ingest loads of mind bleach to get rid of the image of some out of shape grim toad rogering away - I still have nightmares from the thought of David Mellor sweating and grunting away on Antonia de Sancha like Jaba the Hut having an epileptic fit.

    They say politics is showbiz for ugly people so until Salma Hayek or Sidney Sweeney are occupying the green benches I don’t want to have to imagine their sexual antics.
    May I bring to your attention the MP for Lagan Valley?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 46,707

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.

    Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
    I remember people at RBS moaning that after the bailout and nationalisation they were being held back by a public sector ethos. Without those bonuses they couldn't seem to unleash their entrepreneurial animal spirits anymore. A terrible thing.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 29,118
    boulay said:

    Sean_F said:

    If people favour polyamory, or an open marriage, all well and good.

    But, I do get disgusted by the kind of politician (usually a Conservative), who features his wife and children on election literature, before dumping them in favour of a younger model, or abandoning his wife when she develops cancer.

    IMHO, if they do that to those they are closest to, just imagine what they'll do to the voters.

    The worst thing about it is that when the story of their affair breaks you have to ingest loads of mind bleach to get rid of the image of some out of shape grim toad rogering away - I still have nightmares from the thought of David Mellor sweating and grunting away on Antonia de Sancha like Jaba the Hut having an epileptic fit.

    They say politics is showbiz for ugly people so until Salma Hayek or Sidney Sweeney are occupying the green benches I don’t want to have to imagine their sexual antics.
    Jabber the Hut, surely?

  • LeonLeon Posts: 64,076
    Photo Quiz meets Interior Deco Update:

    Why is it better to put this on a wall rather than some random art by someone else (*waves at @TOPPING*)?

    What makes this special? Why have I put it on the wall in my revamping new living room?



    Answers on an antique parchment
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 56,361
    kinabalu said:

    kinabalu said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
    When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "

    Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
    If the government doesn't implement some kind of restriction on VPNs before they get kicked out I will happily and publicly acknowledge I was wrong. But the alternative scenario is to admit the OSA is a failure, repeal it and look like a bunch of ridiculous fools. Can't see this government being in any way willing to do that.

    The only way I see a VPN ban not happening is if some organisation - Wikipedia possibly - refuses to comply with the OSA and then takes uk.gov to the ECHR and wins. But that will take more years than this administration has left.
    I'm no tech expert but I'd have thought there are possibilities between do nothing (about VPNs accessing 'nasty' sites) and a ban (the chance of which imo is close to zero).
    If you want to secure access to certain sites for people below the age of x, you need to have a way of proving you are over x.

    1) you use official identification documents to prove this. Online banks do this. No one, will upload their passport details to a porn site, though.

    2) A trusted third party could run a site that, having proved you are over x, issues one use codes (tokens) that confirm to the over x sites that you are over x, without disclosing your actual personal identity.

    Either will not prevent strawman sales, logins etc.

    The second option is the most practical. It could be used for a wide range of things - buying alcohol online, gambling access etc. So using it would not be immediately disreputable. You could easily imagine that Amazon could offer issuing such tokens.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 32,286
    HYUFD said:

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.

    Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
    Were bank bailouts left to shareholders in your reality?
    Sadly, no. Too Big Too Fail.

    What we need is more, and deeper failure.

    So : You run a bank. It fails.

    1) You can kill your self - your family is provided for.
    2) You can live the rest of your life on benefits in Bedford, after 20 years in prison.
    3) You can escape by sea. And be murdered by financially sophisticated, sociopathic whalers off the coast of Norway.
    Not all banks were too big to fail, the US government allowed Lehmans to go bankrupt with no bailout
    Lehmans was too big to fail but the Fed did not realise, so they let it fail which triggered the Global Financial Crisis.

    (As an aside, it is odd that those PBers who are wrongly convinced the GFC was somehow Gordon Brown's fault overlook that London also declined to save Lehmans!)
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 129,537
    edited August 8
    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    The main difference is that a reckoning comes in the end. After the GFC, whole floors of useless drone at Shiti Group were ditched. We used to joke that the tower was shorter each morning.

    Anyone seen Debit Suisse recently? No?
    I remember people at RBS moaning that after the bailout and nationalisation they were being held back by a public sector ethos. Without those bonuses they couldn't seem to unleash their entrepreneurial animal spirits anymore. A terrible thing.
    Or they could try and get a job at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan or Barclays or HSBC
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 66,376
    MattW said:

    Whilst I'm on 20mph limits, I see that Wrexham have now reinstated 30 limits on perhaps 45 of their highways, which is 52 "sections".

    Claude says they have 320 "roads" in Wrexham, so that is something like 14-15% on the place in Wales which had the most to do.

    They seem to have used the opportunity to get the Welsh Govt to pay for the remova of old signs and signposts that had been left in place from years ago, and to pay for lots of brand new ones. For a place that was quite aggressive in implementing 20mph limits, a rollback to only 80-85% now at 20mph seems OK - that will leave connector and through routes at 30mph, and give the benefits everywhere else.

    https://news.wrexham.gov.uk/review-of-20mph-speed-limits-update/

    ( @Big_G_NorthWales ?)

    Yes - all seems very sensible
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 56,342

    kinabalu said:

    Marc Andreessen complains to Downing Street about Online Safety Act and UK tech minister

    In a sign that the government was caught off guard by the extent to which these tools would be used, ministers last week requested data from the internet regulator Ofcom about how and when VPNs were being downloaded, according to two people briefed on the move.

    Kyle has said publicly that he is not considering any ban on VPNs, but officials say ministers are keen to understand how the tools are being used, particularly by children.

    It's not hard to see where this is going. What happens when Ofcom come back and say, yes, VPNs are being extensively used by under-18s and the OSA is being bypassed to the extent it's a giant waste of time?

    I don't believe Kyle's statements about VPNs. He's one of those morons who believe any problem can be fixed by making a new law. So the government will ban VPNs without a licence.
    When people say this stuff about what's going to happen and it doesn't (eg the government were going to keep the lockdown beyond the pandemic because they were luvin it) I'd like to see some accountability. Some fessing up that "I was wrong and will learn from it "

    Like I always do on the odd occasion I get things wrong.
    If the government doesn't implement some kind of restriction on VPNs before they get kicked out I will happily and publicly acknowledge I was wrong. But the alternative scenario is to admit the OSA is a failure, repeal it and look like a bunch of ridiculous fools. Can't see this government being in any way willing to do that.

    The only way I see a VPN ban not happening is if some organisation - Wikipedia possibly - refuses to comply with the OSA and then takes uk.gov to the ECHR and wins. But that will take more years than this administration has left.
    But what does “VPN Ban” actually look like, technically, that doesn’t look very Chinese in its implementation?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 55,522
    Leon said:

    Photo Quiz meets Interior Deco Update:

    Why is it better to put this on a wall rather than some random art by someone else (*waves at @TOPPING*)?

    What makes this special? Why have I put it on the wall in my revamping new living room?



    Answers on an antique parchment

    Sanliurfa, Turkey?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 56,342
    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    kinabalu said:

    Sandpit said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Eabhal said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    kinabalu said:

    nico67 said:

    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
    You’d think someone interested in politics would understand the difference between the deficit and the debt but you’ve never been good with numbers.
    You did not just say national debt, you said national debt increase, the national debt increase was lower under Cameron and Clegg and Osborne than Brown and Darling
    Are you trying to argue that the national debt didn’t increase between 2010 and 2024? Because it did. Massively.
    It increased at a lower rate than under Brown and Darling, certainly pre lockdown
    And yet the national debt increased. Massively. Strong financial management by the Tories. Bravo.
    Spending as a percentage of gdp was 47% when Brown left office in 2010, falling to 41% when Cameron left office in 2016
    Maybe, but that isn’t the national debt. That’s a different statistic entirely.
    It led to the decline in increase in the national debt
    Maybe. But yet the national debt still increased over the 14 years you were in power. Massively.
    What additional cuts would you have made to balance the budget and run a surplus?
    I'd double council tax. That's the current deficit wiped out (nearly) in one go.

    A freeze on hospital spending, abolish stamp duty, NICs/IT merger. Borrow as much for capital investment as the markets allow.
    I honestly don't see the point in borrowing for capital investment when the cost of infrastructure is so high. We need to actually work to remove all of those barriers before we even think about that. Again, it just seems absolutely criminal to me that building a third runway at Heathrow will cost £49bn, even the short runway will come in at £21bn. This is just one example, there's suggestions that the next nuclear plant will be £70bn while Korea builds all of this similar infrastructure at a tenth of the cost. It's not as though their living standards are substantially different to ours.
    It's not universally bad. We've had some good projects in Scotland. Queensferry Crossing came in under budget and on time. Small stuff, incremental stuff, tends to go ok.

    I think you've fallen for the trap of thinking in terms of billions, not millions. The odd town bypass, new tram routes, a few million on cycle lanes, rail electrification, phone masts, a public health investment. That can add up to billions, but you've diversified across projects so that one disaster doesn't cause the whole investment to collapse.
    Yes lots of small projects can add up to a decent gain, yet it's the big projects that will move the needle. The problem we have is the government treats it like something like HS2 as a 5x 55 point unrelated tickets instead of an epic with 150x 3 point tickets.

    One of my best mates was previously on the project and he was sitting around being paid £650 per day to do nothing because there just wasn't anything for him to do but they'd contracted him from a set date to a set date but that work was so badly delayed that for the whole 3 months of the contract he got paid to be "on call" and then once work finally did commence they had to call him and his crew back at an even higher rate. That's about 25 electricians of varying skill level on day rates because they declined to do the fixed price deal he offered as it was "too restrictive" due to him setting a specific time to start and finish, requiring the site to be handed in a certain way and all materials etc... to be delivered to a tight schedule and completing the project over 4.5 months. In the end it took them 3 months of doing nothing, then another 6 months of actual work and the overall cost was 2.5x what he offered in the fixed price contract.

    I have no doubt that this small example isn't the only one where inept public sector project managers and consultants who don't know what they're doing end up pissing public money into the wind because there's zero repercussions.
    That’s nuts, and you know that exactly the same scenario would have played out for every single other trade on the project. Thousands of people people each paid hundreds of pounds a day to do nothing productive.
    That - on a massive scale - is what I saw and experienced all day every day during my time in 'investment banking'. And not a government or public sector employee in sight.
    The difference being that investment banking inefficiencies are a problem for the bank management and shareholders, as opposed to taxpayers being forcibly relieved of their money under penalty of imprisonment.
    Except it is a drag on everyone else and in 08/09 led to an enormous direct call on public money.
    That was Gordon Brown’s fault from the beginning to the end. Many banks should have been allowed to fail, with insured deposits and safe mortgages kept in some sort of a government bank that could have been floated later.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 64,076

    Leon said:

    Photo Quiz meets Interior Deco Update:

    Why is it better to put this on a wall rather than some random art by someone else (*waves at @TOPPING*)?

    What makes this special? Why have I put it on the wall in my revamping new living room?



    Answers on an antique parchment

    Sanliurfa, Turkey?
    Yes, bravo!

    But why this photo of this scene at this moment? Which makes it worthy of hanging on a wall?

    Otherwise, it's an OK but slightly banal photo of a kid by a weird old rockwall
Sign In or Register to comment.