We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
And, we've had a lot of regular posters on here arguing for still yet more regulation.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Speaking of government waste, has anyone worked out why HMG is giving £2bn a year to Microsoft? According to this article, that isn’t even for licensing costs; public bodies have to buy licenses separately.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yes, well, there are always those who advocate simplistic solutions to complex problems.
As usual, it's our old mate "the public sector" who is the whipping boy (or girl given the large percentage of women and indeed part timers employed in councils and elsewhere) with pay to be frozen (in real terms, a pay cut), pensions cut etc, etc. Of course those who rely on the public sector for help will also be affected.
Just so those on £80k a year can continue with their horse riding lessons and outdoor jacuzzis (apparently).
Piss off. It's 'simple' in every other country, that's why they can still build things on a reasonable budget and to a reasonable timeframe.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
But.... everything gets better if you centralise it. 'Back office' savings - kerching! Mysterious 'efficiency' savings - kerching! Haven't you picked up on 20-30 years of very, very expensive consultant advice?
If not - what you need is more very expensive consultant advice. And a bit more centralisation.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Speaking of government waste, has anyone worked out why HMG is giving £2bn a year to Microsoft? According to this article, that isn’t even for licensing costs; public bodies have to buy licenses separately.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
It’s not just the money, it’s also the time.
The lack of 3rd runway at LHR is already costing billions in opportunity costs, and has been for years now. They’ve been doing ‘special spacing’ (read ‘planes closer together than almost anywhere else in the world’) between aircraft on approach for decades, but means that on a foggy morning dozens of planes end up sent somewhere else or don’t take off.
I’ll keep referring to my story that Dubai’s Terminal 3 was built in less time than Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning inquiry. Same scope of project, new buildings on an extant airfield with some access roads. Dubai built it while London talked about building it.
The 3rd runway is going to be even worse, there wil be a decade of talking about it before we see a spade in the ground.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Speaking of government waste, has anyone worked out why HMG is giving £2bn a year to Microsoft? According to this article, that isn’t even for licensing costs; public bodies have to buy licenses separately.
Yes the amount appears excessive, but they’re not buying off-the-shelf they have a whole load of requirements related to data. They probably got MS to build a data centre specifically for the government, and includes services like live real-time backups.
The only reasonable alternative is Amazon AWS, which would cost similar.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
What the hecketty heck does he think the job of the police is? If I recall the Peel principles correctly (I may not), the police are at heart nothing more than members of the public with specialist tools who spend their days preserving order and arresting those who break law/order? He can't lie back, snack on cake, fart and say "Nothing to do with me guv"
Apparently, he can though. On just a few quid short of the prime ministers salary. I'm entirely sure when Reform take the post over they will slash the pay to just a smidge over median wage though.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Speaking of government waste, has anyone worked out why HMG is giving £2bn a year to Microsoft? According to this article, that isn’t even for licensing costs; public bodies have to buy licenses separately.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Yeah, let’s do nothing but bumble along as we are because decisions are ‘tough’ and we don’t have politicians to take tough decisions. 🤔
It's nothing to do with being "tough" - it's a recognition the state of the country defies easy or simplistic solutions.
Yes, let's debate solutions and ideas, nothing wrong with that but the default point for many seems "I'm not paying any more tax" while the tough solution might be to say "yes, I'm prepared to pay more in tax but I want Govenrment to be better, more efficient and more responsive".
More efficient necessarily requires job cuts. You can bang on about local government as much as you like but it's a basic fact that the state now employs more people than ever and output has barely moved. We need to cut the waste and get middle managers and wasters out of the way of people who deliver. You can't deliver efficiency without cutting jobs. 1m job cuts, a hiring freeze, wage freeze and 25% cut to pension contributions and equivalent cut to defined benefit schemes as well as closing them for good.
State employment has become another form of welfare, too many people sit around delivering nothing and get a salary. It's time to cut the cancer out.
I think what you'll find is that we need to bring in more middle managers who can bring in process, admin, 'best practice' (ie, more process and admin). Ideally people who couldn't cut it in the private sector so they can wreak havoc in the public sector for a few years then retire on pensions their underlings could only dream of.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
Good job they've such a stellar economic record to rely on then. Erm.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Speaking of government waste, has anyone worked out why HMG is giving £2bn a year to Microsoft? According to this article, that isn’t even for licensing costs; public bodies have to buy licenses separately.
Yes the amount appears excessive, but they’re not buying off-the-shelf they have a whole load of requirements related to data. They probably got MS to build a data centre specifically for the government, and includes services like live real-time backups.
The only reasonable alternative is Amazon AWS, which would cost similar.
If my experience of public sector cloud contracts is at all representative - they are buying 'bog standard' for 'bespoke' prices.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
Good job they've such a stellar economic record to rely on them. Erm.
They have a crap record across the board. Gauke is still probably right.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
I can buy index linked senior Gilts that yield 5.03% (22/03/29) and on the same day I am advertised similar fixed term mortgages for 3.8%
I could borrow £500k against a property, pay the bank £19,000 pa interest and sink the cash into inflation proof Gilts that pay me £25,150 pa.
Obviously I have skipped taxes for the sake of simplicity (everyone’s taxes are different), but you shouldn’t be able to carry trade the risk free rate of return INSIDE a currency?
Why are UK banks seemingly offering this arbitrage? Are they just trying to prop up their residential property books?
It feels one of those things you notice that screams “something is going to break soon”.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
It’s not just the money, it’s also the time.
The lack of 3rd runway at LHR is already costing billions in opportunity costs, and has been for years now. They’ve been doing ‘special spacing’ (read ‘planes closer together than almost anywhere else in the world’) between aircraft on approach for decades, but means that on a foggy morning dozens of planes end up sent somewhere else or don’t take off.
I’ll keep referring to my story that Dubai’s Terminal 3 was built in less time than Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning inquiry. Same scope of project, new buildings on an extant airfield with some access roads. Dubai built it while London talked about building it.
The 3rd runway is going to be even worse, there wil be a decade of talking about it before we see a spade in the ground.
We might as well consolidate all our expensive infrastructure projects into one combined mega project of a nuclear plant slap bag in the middle of Heathrow's third runway.
Thanks for the conversation on the previous thread - very interesting. I have a couple of points to come back to that I have not answered.
The thing that has surprised me about these proposals is that so far they seem in general to have broad brush support. Even when the Telegraph tried to make a culture war, they were being thoroughly beaten up by their own readers in the comments. eg:
DT you've had all day to correct the impression that we oldies will be subjected to full driving tests every 3 years. You know it's only eye tests. I can only conclude that you are either guilty of clickbait or the article was written by some young oik who hates pensioners and wants to start a campaign against them.
Insurance tends to be very high in two age brackets, males between 17 and 25, and all drivers over 75. For under 25s restrictions on passenger numbers/younger ages seems to be among the most popular ideas. I'd be in favour of both eye tests for over 80s and something for cognitive response, perhaps similar to the hazard perception test?
There are many aspects of driving in the UK which should be reformed. First, B + E tests should never have been scrapped (car plus trailer), this was the Tories idea to get rid of to cut a backlog of driving tests and lorry tests. Result, more inexperienced drivers on our roads towing. Also no one passing a car test should be automatically allowed to drive a 28T tractor and trailer outfit without sitting a full tractor test.
Even DT readers realise there are issues at the end of the age spectrum we need to do better on, with cases like the one I linked to in Edinburgh. I agree the law needs changed to make roads safer
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
It’s not just the money, it’s also the time.
The lack of 3rd runway at LHR is already costing billions in opportunity costs, and has been for years now. They’ve been doing ‘special spacing’ (read ‘planes closer together than almost anywhere else in the world’) between aircraft on approach for decades, but means that on a foggy morning dozens of planes end up sent somewhere else or don’t take off.
I’ll keep referring to my story that Dubai’s Terminal 3 was built in less time than Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning inquiry. Same scope of project, new buildings on an extant airfield with some access roads. Dubai built it while London talked about building it.
The 3rd runway is going to be even worse, there wil be a decade of talking about it before we see a spade in the ground.
We might as well consolidate all our expensive infrastructure projects into one combined mega project of a nuclear plant slap bag in the middle of Heathrow's third runway.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Is there a breakdown of where these extra peeps work?
NHS staffing is up by about 30% to 1.5 million (1.3 million WTE) over that period, with some staff groups increasing more, mostly using and other support staff.
My Trust is reducing its workforce by about 6% this year under current plans and budgets. The 10 year NHS plan has further staff shrinkage at acute Trusts built in already. It's not obvious who and where those will be, and not likely to give much scope for further cuts. Certainly not if Streeting wants the waiting lists down by the GE.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
What the hecketty heck does he think the job of the police is? If I recall the Peel principles correctly (I may not), the police are at heart nothing more than members of the public with specialist tools who spend their days preserving order and arresting those who break law/order? He can't lie back, snack on cake, fart and say "Nothing to do with me guv"
Implicit in the Peelian principles is that the public are part of the law enforcement system.
Accounts of passers by detaining criminals for the police used to be so common that they weren’t of note.
Officers pursuing the Sidney Street robbers borrowed firearms from the public….
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
Tricky from here.
I suspect that the answer was to go on the economy, wait for the government to mishandle that (all governments mishandle the economy eventually), but in the meantime go practical and pragmatic and attempt to strangle Farage at birth by pointing out that he's a clueless gobshite, with no realistic plans for anything. It might not herald a return to government in 2029, but it might leave a platform to work with in 2034.
The trouble with going on immigration and woke is that it just gives Reform even more oxygen and credibility. As things stand, the old blue team are going to be even further from government after the next election than they are now.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
We seem to be back in “why can’t we just” world this evening. Government is simple etc.
Maybe it's not simple but you can't pretend that the British government doesn't over complicate everything. Just look at £49bn being spent on a third runway or £78bn on a nuclear power plant. It's completely ridiculous.
It’s not just the money, it’s also the time.
The lack of 3rd runway at LHR is already costing billions in opportunity costs, and has been for years now. They’ve been doing ‘special spacing’ (read ‘planes closer together than almost anywhere else in the world’) between aircraft on approach for decades, but means that on a foggy morning dozens of planes end up sent somewhere else or don’t take off.
I’ll keep referring to my story that Dubai’s Terminal 3 was built in less time than Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning inquiry. Same scope of project, new buildings on an extant airfield with some access roads. Dubai built it while London talked about building it.
The 3rd runway is going to be even worse, there wil be a decade of talking about it before we see a spade in the ground.
We might as well consolidate all our expensive infrastructure projects into one combined mega project of a nuclear plant slap bag in the middle of Heathrow's third runway.
How much affordable housing though?
The power plant and airport workers can live in a giant basement flat complex. It will be easier for them to commute to work.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
The public has a duty to stand up to shoplifters rather than relying solely on police officers, a policing chief has said.
Matthew Barber, the Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner for Thames Valley, said it was wrong to think that tackling thieves was just a job for police.
He said: “If you’re not even going to challenge people, you’re not going to try and stop them, then people will get away with it. That’s not just about policing. That’s a bigger problem with society, people who [don’t do anything] – you’re part of the problem.”
What the hecketty heck does he think the job of the police is? If I recall the Peel principles correctly (I may not), the police are at heart nothing more than members of the public with specialist tools who spend their days preserving order and arresting those who break law/order? He can't lie back, snack on cake, fart and say "Nothing to do with me guv"
Implicit in the Peelian principles is that the public are part of the law enforcement system.
Accounts of passers by detaining criminals for the police used to be so common that they weren’t of note.
Officers pursuing the Sidney Street robbers borrowed firearms from the public….
Thanks for the conversation on the previous thread - very interesting. I have a couple of points to come back to that I have not answered.
The thing that has surprised me about these proposals is that so far they seem in general to have broad brush support. Even when the Telegraph tried to make a culture war, they were being thoroughly beaten up by their own readers in the comments. eg:
DT you've had all day to correct the impression that we oldies will be subjected to full driving tests every 3 years. You know it's only eye tests. I can only conclude that you are either guilty of clickbait or the article was written by some young oik who hates pensioners and wants to start a campaign against them.
Insurance tends to be very high in two age brackets, males between 17 and 25, and all drivers over 75. For under 25s restrictions on passenger numbers/younger ages seems to be among the most popular ideas. I'd be in favour of both eye tests for over 80s and something for cognitive response, perhaps similar to the hazard perception test?
There are many aspects of driving in the UK which should be reformed. First, B + E tests should never have been scrapped (car plus trailer), this was the Tories idea to get rid of to cut a backlog of driving tests and lorry tests. Result, more inexperienced drivers on our roads towing. Also no one passing a car test should be automatically allowed to drive a 28T tractor and trailer outfit without sitting a full tractor test.
Even DT readers realise there are issues at the end of the age spectrum we need to do better on, with cases like the one I linked to in Edinburgh. I agree the law needs changed to make roads safer
Yes - I agree there is much opportunity, and about the shambles of towing.
My bete noir is the "showman's exception".
Yes - one item debating online that surprised me about 17 year olds and graduated licences was pushback from tradesmen wanting the teenage apprentice to be able to continue to drive the long wheelbase high top Transit.
I'd go for at least a hazard perception test every 10 years for all of us ... at licence card renewal time.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
We are forever told by remainers how small the EU bureaucracy is. Unless it's truly of unicorn-level efficiency, even replicating it in its entirety would be but a small increase.
Besides which, as a net financial contributor to the EU, we were employing them anyway.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Who's wiping arses and ensuring medication is taken on day two? Or is that a problem for after day three?
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Who's wiping arses and ensuring medication is taken on day two? Or is that a problem for after day three?
Unemployed layabouts. Do the job or lose all benefits. If you can walk you can wipe bums.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Sounds like another set of regulations that won't be cheap to enforce. (See the budget for ICE across the Atlantic.)
Plod telling people to have a go is the most irresponsible advice I've heard. People will get injured or sued or prosecuted. If robbers know people will try to stop them they won't stop robbing they will just build in the need to handle the stoppers. And they will likely both be tooled up and handier than the would be heroes.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
The problem with the 2012 opening ceremony (and I suppose it's not one that Truss can point out given her present political views) is that it 'celebrated' the NHS even though the vast amounts of money the ceremony cost could have been better spent, particularly at that time, on the NHS.
Disagree.
The money spent on the opening ceremony and the games themselves go lots of people into sport. Thats far better than spaffing it on the ever growing behemoth of the NHS.
I seriously believe the country might be better off if we disbanded the NHS, stopped funding it, and spent the money on giving every fat person Mounjaro and everyone else a monetary reward for exercise. £5 per stiff hike, £10 for a game of padel, etc. £350 for quitting smoking for a year, or lowering booze intake by half
The NHS encourages malingering fatties who are of no benefit. We should incentivise slender fitness with hard cash
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Sounds like another set of regulations that won't be cheap to enforce. (See the budget for ICE across the Atlantic.)
Not really, it's a net decrease in complicated regulations. You're only handing out visas based on income levels, the current system has all sorts of weird exceptions, this would have none. A person either makes the bar on income or they don't. Make it something like £75-85k and you're really only giving out a few thousand per year to the world's best engineers and doctors etc... who will add value to the nation from the day they arrive.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Who's wiping arses and ensuring medication is taken on day two? Or is that a problem for after day three?
Unemployed layabouts. Do the job or lose all benefits. If you can walk you can wipe bums.
Presumably with çlean DBS. Or would safeguarding be binned too.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
I'd say that one potential distinctive for Kemi is to avoid performative cruelty, but I am not sure have far Reform will actually argue for that despite some characters licking their lips. OTOH and if I have it right, Farage is tacking to the centre on some things to broaden his appeal.
An example is his proposed case-by-case risk assessment for trans women in woman's prisons, following his adviser. That's an opportunity for Kemi to out-Trump him should she choose.
FPT: My 5 penneth was to take against the idea of a zero alcohol limit which found some favour in the header.
MattW's chart of limits across Europe showed that no one had a no alcohol in blood rule, and the obvious reason for that is that someone driving after eating an overripe apple would fall foul.
Effectively zero still had to be a number and the 0.02 - not straight after 1 drink - seems a reasonable level for that.
It's like when we detect for toxins in harmless picogram levels and, lo, we find them everywhere, shock horror.
I do try to keep my driving to some kind of effective zero. I don't know how rough ball park this method is, but the know what you drank, know when you stopped and after you stopped give an hour for every unit (units aren't really that hard to figure) before driving. Puts a strict upper limit on how much booze in a session when driving the next morning.
The problem with the 2012 opening ceremony (and I suppose it's not one that Truss can point out given her present political views) is that it 'celebrated' the NHS even though the vast amounts of money the ceremony cost could have been better spent, particularly at that time, on the NHS.
Disagree.
The money spent on the opening ceremony and the games themselves go lots of people into sport. Thats far better than spaffing it on the ever growing behemoth of the NHS.
I seriously believe the country might be better off if we disbanded the NHS, stopped funding it, and spent the money on giving every fat person Mounjaro and everyone else a monetary reward for exercise. £5 per stiff hike, £10 for a game of padel, etc. £350 for quitting smoking for a year, or lowering booze intake by half
The NHS encourages malingering fatties who are of no benefit. We should incentivise slender fitness with hard cash
As I've a BMI below 20 can I malinger safely on the taxpayer? I heartily endorse this policy.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
Yes, by far. I mean just look at the restrictions placed on speech by the OSA. As someone who has dealt with FCA regulations for about a decade I can tell you now that the direction of travel has only ever been for more, not less regulation.
You're literally kidding yourself if you believe the direction of travel on regulation and freedom has been anything but more restrictive and for more oversight. It's why the UK economy is less dynamic than it used to be. Look at how much of a disaster HS2 has been, or Hinckley Point C, or the new proposed £78bn nuclear power plant, or how long it took for the regulators to approve SMRs from RollS Royce. You have this narrative you've built up that because politicians have been demanding less regulation that the state has actually delivered that, it has done the exact opposite.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Who's wiping arses and ensuring medication is taken on day two? Or is that a problem for after day three?
Unemployed layabouts. Do the job or lose all benefits. If you can walk you can wipe bums.
Presumably with çlean DBS. Or would safeguarding be binned too.
Do DBSs for new immigrants pick up all foreign entanglements? Maybe convictions, but presumably not to the level a DBS for someone who has lived in the UK all their life would. And maybe for some countries not even convictions?
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
Certainly in terms of protest. The Greenham Common women were called many things, but no one called them terrorists.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Who's wiping arses and ensuring medication is taken on day two? Or is that a problem for after day three?
Unemployed layabouts. Do the job or lose all benefits. If you can walk you can wipe bums.
Presumably with çlean DBS. Or would safeguarding be binned too.
Do DBSs for new immigrants pick up all foreign entanglements? Maybe convictions, but presumably not to the level a DBS for someone who has lived in the UK all their life would. And maybe for some countries not even convictions?
That's assuming the agency even sends the people who they claim are their workers.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
I sympathise with this view, but I don't know what the Conservatives can do about it. The alliance between nativist anti-immigration voters and pro-industry pro-immigration voters that existed in the Conservative party was upheld by strictly controlled immigration and (fatally?) fractured by the Boriswave. You now have Conservative voters wanting moar money and moar growth and moar money, and Reform voters who want less/no migration and f**k growth. Kemi is not capable of bringing the two together, at least to date. You tell me how to fix this, because the only thing I can think of is a pact and a merger before 2029 and nobody has the strategic insight to do this.
As a still current Tory member and friend of many Tory voters or adjacent Tory voters the mood is very much not in favour of more immigration to drive economic growth. Across the board Tory voters are pretty anti-immigration of all kinds except very highly skilled workers. There may be the odd CEO who will speak in favour of mass immigration but the remaining voters are fed up as much as Reform voters are and people who I know that reliably voted conservative will likely vote for whichever party is best placed to deliver net zero immigration.
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
Who's wiping arses and ensuring medication is taken on day two? Or is that a problem for after day three?
Unemployed layabouts. Do the job or lose all benefits. If you can walk you can wipe bums.
Presumably with çlean DBS. Or would safeguarding be binned too.
Do DBSs for new immigrants pick up all foreign entanglements? Maybe convictions, but presumably not to the level a DBS for someone who has lived in the UK all their life would. And maybe for some countries not even convictions?
That's assuming the agency even sends the people who they claim are their workers.
My mother had a couple of people who couldn't speak English as ad-hoc carers from an agency sent by the council at the house after an operation. Thankfully 95% of people who turned up were on a scale from competent to wonderful.
Trump plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—literally on Independence Day, July 4— by hosting a cage fight between two men at the White House
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
YES, omg YES
How so?
Connolly wouldn't be imprisoned for spouting guff on IRC and the Palestine Action people wouldn't be charged under terror offences.
Trump plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—literally on Independence Day, July 4— by hosting a cage fight between two men at the White House
Plod telling people to have a go is the most irresponsible advice I've heard. People will get injured or sued or prosecuted. If robbers know people will try to stop them they won't stop robbing they will just build in the need to handle the stoppers. And they will likely both be tooled up and handier than the would be heroes.
I get your logic, but I am not sure it's true
The shoplifters near me tend to be scrawny druggies or blatant opportunists, or maybe the really young working as a gang
They don't look like people who would happily shank someone if confronted with physicality, I suspect they'd drop everything and run. Why get in a knife fight over £50 worth of ribeye steak?
I would not want to be the first person to test this theory, however
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
YES, omg YES
How so?
Connolly wouldn't be imprisoned for spouting guff on IRC and the Palestine Action people wouldn't be charged under terror offences.
And yet. Gerry Adams' voice couldn't be heard on TV. And I'm pretty sure soliciting arson on a building with people in it has always been a crime.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This stands at about £1.3 tn at the moment. 2.5% is about £32 billion. That's a cut of £1000 pa in expenditure for 32 million people, or £10,000 for 3.2 million people.
Even when you have identified these cuts (answers on a postcard to 11 Downing Street) you have only cut about a third of our annual debt interest payments, or about a fifth of the additional amount we are borrowing each year for our grandchildren to pay back.
Headcount. The number of uk central government employees was just over 4m in q1 2025 vs 3.4m in q1 2020.
Let’s say 0.5m at the median wage of £30k = £15bn p.a. (Plus the social costs so let’s say another £5bn)
Local government employment has fallen about 30k in that period to a shade under 2m.
I’m not sure that the quality of government services has improved by that much over the last 5 years?
Over time - and it might take a year - this we’ll be absorbed by the productive economy so the income and social taxes will be replaced and hopefully output will be higher resulting in additional corporate taxes
Trump plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—literally on Independence Day, July 4— by hosting a cage fight between two men at the White House
Thanks for the conversation on the previous thread - very interesting. I have a couple of points to come back to that I have not answered.
The thing that has surprised me about these proposals is that so far they seem in general to have broad brush support. Even when the Telegraph tried to make a culture war, they were being thoroughly beaten up by their own readers in the comments. eg:
DT you've had all day to correct the impression that we oldies will be subjected to full driving tests every 3 years. You know it's only eye tests. I can only conclude that you are either guilty of clickbait or the article was written by some young oik who hates pensioners and wants to start a campaign against them.
Insurance tends to be very high in two age brackets, males between 17 and 25, and all drivers over 75. For under 25s restrictions on passenger numbers/younger ages seems to be among the most popular ideas. I'd be in favour of both eye tests for over 80s and something for cognitive response, perhaps similar to the hazard perception test?
There are many aspects of driving in the UK which should be reformed. First, B + E tests should never have been scrapped (car plus trailer), this was the Tories idea to get rid of to cut a backlog of driving tests and lorry tests. Result, more inexperienced drivers on our roads towing. Also no one passing a car test should be automatically allowed to drive a 28T tractor and trailer outfit without sitting a full tractor test.
Even DT readers realise there are issues at the end of the age spectrum we need to do better on, with cases like the one I linked to in Edinburgh. I agree the law needs changed to make roads safer
B + E tests and the associated regime was one of the stupidest things the government had ever done - it needed scrapping. The old rules actively incentivised towing trailers with unsuitable tow motors.
Accidents involving heavy trailers (which is what the B+E rules prohibited) are negligible. Insofar as there is a problem with accidents involving trailers at-all (which we don't really) the main problem is large surface area lightweight caravans towed behind cars which aren't heavy enough getting crosswinded by lorries on motorways. And that's always been legal without a B+E so long as the combination isn't very heavy.
Again, zero point in making people take a tractor test. There aren't many accidents, and almost none of them are had by people who aren't perfectly capable of passing a tractor test. Most of the lads running round at a million miles an hour in FastTracs have taken a tractor test anyway, the farm lads all do it at 16 so they've a means of driving home from the pub.
Making everyone do a tractor test just stuffs up people like me who jump in a tractor for a couple of weeks a year to help my mates cart in silage via 1/4 mile of single track lane (risk of serious accident approximately nil).
Plod telling people to have a go is the most irresponsible advice I've heard. People will get injured or sued or prosecuted. If robbers know people will try to stop them they won't stop robbing they will just build in the need to handle the stoppers. And they will likely both be tooled up and handier than the would be heroes.
I get your logic, but I am not sure it's true
The shoplifters near me tend to be scrawny druggies or blatant opportunists, or maybe the really young working as a gang
They don't look like people who would happily shank someone if confronted with physicality, I suspect they'd drop everything and run. Why get in a knife fight over £50 worth of ribeye steak?
I would not want to be the first person to test this theory, however
They have nothing to lose and are desperate for the next fix. Prison is probably a safer environment for them.
Plod telling people to have a go is the most irresponsible advice I've heard. People will get injured or sued or prosecuted. If robbers know people will try to stop them they won't stop robbing they will just build in the need to handle the stoppers. And they will likely both be tooled up and handier than the would be heroes.
I get your logic, but I am not sure it's true
The shoplifters near me tend to be scrawny druggies or blatant opportunists, or maybe the really young working as a gang
They don't look like people who would happily shank someone if confronted with physicality, I suspect they'd drop everything and run. Why get in a knife fight over £50 worth of ribeye steak?
I would not want to be the first person to test this theory, however
They have nothing to lose and are desperate for the next fix. Prison is probably a safer environment for them.
Rather you than me.
Nah, it's bollocks
Recall, I was a smack addict for 10 years. I know - or knew (many are dead) - plenty of drug addicts
You are very seldom that desperate for a fix you will almost-pointlessly risk getting beaten up. And if that became the likely outcome of any shoplifting foray, they would stop doing it immediately
Trouble is, they would turn to different crimes, but that's not the argument we are having. IF shoplifting was physically and painfully hindered, it would cease. The rewards are not big enough
Our problem is that we have decriminalised shoplifting. That's it. We have simply invited every chancer to try it, with zero comeback
What is going on with Tommy Skinner?! Meeting up with JD Vance now
JD Vance is to meet Nigel Farage on Wednesday for breakfast in the Cotswolds as he mixes business with pleasure during his UK summer holiday.
The US vice-president, his wife Usha and their three children spent the weekend with his friend David Lammy, the foreign secretary, at Chevening. The Times understands that on Monday, Vance enjoyed a barbecue with his friend James Orr, the Cambridge academic; Danny Kruger, the Tory MP; and Thomas Skinner, the former Apprentice contestant, with whom the American has bonded over social media.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
YES, omg YES
How so?
Connolly wouldn't be imprisoned for spouting guff on IRC and the Palestine Action people wouldn't be charged under terror offences.
And yet. Gerry Adams' voice couldn't be heard on TV. And I'm pretty sure soliciting arson on a building with people in it has always been a crime.
30 years ago Lucy Connolly would have had to publish her offensive drivel in a magazine who would have been liable for publishing it.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
This is why the Tories may need someone a bit slimier like Jenrick to pitch to the lizard brain in a way that I don't think Kemi can but Nige definitely is able to. There's a huge chunk of voters up for grabs next time around. What's clear though, is that Labour are absolutely nowhere. The public absolute loathe Starmer and if he's still PM in the run up to the election he will lead them to their worst defeat, maybe ever.
Kemi has an oddly strong position to speak about immigration, being one herself but she needs to use it properly and goad the left into targeting her so she gets into the news. She needs her "stab the country in the front" moment with Starmer close to the election.
Trump plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—literally on Independence Day, July 4— by hosting a cage fight between two men at the White House
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Isn't that his point?
He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.
That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
This is why the Tories may need someone a bit slimier like Jenrick to pitch to the lizard brain in a way that I don't think Kemi can but Nige definitely is able to. There's a huge chunk of voters up for grabs next time around. What's clear though, is that Labour are absolutely nowhere. The public absolute loathe Starmer and if he's still PM in the run up to the election he will lead them to their worst defeat, maybe ever.
Kemi has an oddly strong position to speak about immigration, being one herself but she needs to use it properly and goad the left into targeting her so she gets into the news. She needs her "stab the country in the front" moment with Starmer close to the election.
Well, this is one reason I wanted Kemi as leader. Her ethnic background should enable her to be much more brutal on the issue
Trouble is (as I feared) she is a lightweight, she hasn't got the intellectual heft NOR the political wiles. She can't think on her feet, she's not got a persuasive presence, she doesn't connect with voters, she's not a great speaker, she's not that smart. Despite all that, I like her, she'd be a good junior Cabinet Ninister for Hunting Down The Woke, but as LOTO or PM manque? - nah
Jenrick seems the only choice, or Katie Lam. But even then it is likely a fruitless cause in 2028-9. and possibly forever
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
This is why the Tories may need someone a bit slimier like Jenrick to pitch to the lizard brain in a way that I don't think Kemi can but Nige definitely is able to. There's a huge chunk of voters up for grabs next time around. What's clear though, is that Labour are absolutely nowhere. The public absolute loathe Starmer and if he's still PM in the run up to the election he will lead them to their worst defeat, maybe ever.
Kemi has an oddly strong position to speak about immigration, being one herself but she needs to use it properly and goad the left into targeting her so she gets into the news. She needs her "stab the country in the front" moment with Starmer close to the election.
I appreciate that you both disagree with David Gauke politically but you haven't really addressed whether he's wrong electorally. His point that the Tories lost more of their bedrock vote to the Lib Dems rather than Reform seems to have some merit. The Tories have won plenty of elections without the Red Wall seats that went Labour in 2024 and seem likely to go Reform in 2029. They've never won without Surrey.
Trump plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—literally on Independence Day, July 4— by hosting a cage fight between two men at the White House
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Isn't that his point?
He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.
That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.
So there is no future for the Conservatives.
He's always been a Lib Dem, should never have joined the Tories.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
This is why the Tories may need someone a bit slimier like Jenrick to pitch to the lizard brain in a way that I don't think Kemi can but Nige definitely is able to. There's a huge chunk of voters up for grabs next time around. What's clear though, is that Labour are absolutely nowhere. The public absolute loathe Starmer and if he's still PM in the run up to the election he will lead them to their worst defeat, maybe ever.
Kemi has an oddly strong position to speak about immigration, being one herself but she needs to use it properly and goad the left into targeting her so she gets into the news. She needs her "stab the country in the front" moment with Starmer close to the election.
Was that a weird dream or just a bizarre flight of fantasy?
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
Gauke is right, you aren't going to win back voters from Farage trying to be even harder against immigration and the ECHR and anti woke than he is as he will always out populist right you.
They are better off trying to hold the 2024 Sunak voters who are primarily centre right and focused on the economy and dislike Labour's tax rises, that would keep them on 24%.
Then if Farage loses next time and steps down Jenrick could have a chance to reunite the right but not before.
Ironically it is probably better for Tories as above if Labour win the next GE than Reform, at least if Labour win, preferably with no majority, that would prove Farage can't win enough swing voters who used to vote Conservative when the Conservatives won.
If Reform win most seats or a majority though then under FPTP sooner or later the Tories likely end up taken over by Farage
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Isn't that his point?
He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.
That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.
So there is no future for the Conservatives.
And then the question is- if there is a total existence failure by the Conservative party, and every one of their supporters has to decide which way to jump, who ends up as the half party in a 2.5 party system? Bobbing around close to relevance, but never really getting anywhere at Westminster? I reckon you can make a plausible case for any one of Labour, Lib Dem and Reform.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Isn't that his point?
He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.
That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.
So there is no future for the Conservatives.
He's always been a Lib Dem, should never have joined the Tories.
No, he is a fiscal conservative and centre right, at most on the dryest of Orange Book wings of the LDs
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Isn't that his point?
He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.
That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.
So there is no future for the Conservatives.
Of course. That's why the Lib Dems are in the low-mid teens as a %, and Reform are over 30%
Also, those apparently safe Lib Dem seats in the S and SW are all going to swing right as the Boriswave and the boat people ripple out across the shires and boroughs. You can literally watch it happening. Labour are dispersing them all and it's all going to get WORSE, not better
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
This is why the Tories may need someone a bit slimier like Jenrick to pitch to the lizard brain in a way that I don't think Kemi can but Nige definitely is able to. There's a huge chunk of voters up for grabs next time around. What's clear though, is that Labour are absolutely nowhere. The public absolute loathe Starmer and if he's still PM in the run up to the election he will lead them to their worst defeat, maybe ever.
Kemi has an oddly strong position to speak about immigration, being one herself but she needs to use it properly and goad the left into targeting her so she gets into the news. She needs her "stab the country in the front" moment with Starmer close to the election.
I appreciate that you both disagree with David Gauke politically but you haven't really addressed whether he's wrong electorally. His point that the Tories lost more of their bedrock vote to the Lib Dems rather than Reform seems to have some merit. The Tories have won plenty of elections without the Red Wall seats that went Labour in 2024 and seem likely to go Reform in 2029. They've never won without Surrey.
The Tories lost more seats to the LDs but more voters to Reform last year
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Isn't that his point?
He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.
That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.
So there is no future for the Conservatives.
He's always been a Lib Dem, should never have joined the Tories.
No, he is a fiscal conservative and centre right, at most on the dryest of Orange Book wings of the LDs
I'm hearing these strange echoes of a distant time, and Corbynistas saying "why don't you go away and join the Conservatives?" Or something like that, anyway.
I get the impression that there is some overlap in the Venn Diagram between those cheering on us "taking back control" of our laws and regulations and those bemoaning how many folk the government employs.
Yes we can have fewer laws and regulations to go with cutting the state payroll. Sounds like a win/win to me. Fewer busybodies gumming up the system slowing everything down because there's less idiotic regulation and endless appeals for planning or deportations etc...
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
Hasn't cutting regulations been the go to mantra for government since 1979? Why don't we live in a Paradise?
And yet we have more regulation than ever before and more restrictions on freedom than ever before. Weird that our per capita growth rate has slowed to a crawl while governments for the last 30 years increase regulations and decreased personal freedom, it's almost as if the two are intrinsically linked to risk taking and growth.
Are we less free and more regulated than thirty years ago? Really?
YES, omg YES
How so?
Connolly wouldn't be imprisoned for spouting guff on IRC and the Palestine Action people wouldn't be charged under terror offences.
And yet. Gerry Adams' voice couldn't be heard on TV. And I'm pretty sure soliciting arson on a building with people in it has always been a crime.
Gerry Adam’s had a voice over. While advocating a full scale war against the government including very large bombs, machine guns and attempting to assassinate the PM.
Withdrawing unemployment benefit from convicted terrorists (their chief source of money to live on, apart from illegal, cash in had jobs) was considered but rejected.
Banning SF was suggested after the Brighton Bombing. Thatcher dismissed the suggestion instantly.
Meanwhile people cutting the fence at Greenham got arrested and complained about too much sugar in the tea they were given. Then released.
This is going to be a disaster. They just need to get real and cut spending. Freeze public sector salaries, cut the triple lock and cut public sector pensions. Private sector salary growth is stalling already and the number of vacancies is falling drastically so they can't even cry about a recruitment problem like they moaned about when the last government did it.
Taxes can't go up now without taking money out of the productive base of the economy. There's no more left to give.
This is actually targeted at the unearned wealth of the boomer generation. So I'd have thought you would approve.
It's simply not going to raise enough money and will send wealthy people fleeing overseas. The non-dom changes have already caused a huge hole in the public finances, hitting long term investment two tax rises is going to cause an even bigger loss for the government.
For every billion pounds in tax they raise they are going to take a billion out of the economy, if not more given that they will have to target the productive part meaning money that would otherwise be better used and result in a pretty good 1.5x economic multiplier now goes to the state which consumes. I wouldn't be surprised for every £1bn the government intends to raise by the maths it will only get around £0.5-0.6bn in additional revenue due to slower growth.
Cutting spending is the only answer, it isn't beyond the wit of man to cut 2.5% out of the government budget.
This government can't cut spending, and won't.
There is no political will to cut spending. The govt could cut spending if it was so motivated and the opposition have a role to play. Shamefully the Tories did not support the slowing of the benefits spend by 5 billion when they had the chance, simply to oppose for the sake of it.
Universal credit helped get more off welfare and into work and Kemi backed Starmer when he was trying to get those with mental health conditions into some work but Starmer caved to Labour rebels
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
A nice try from Gauke, but frankly I’m not convinced fighting on the economy will help them either.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Yes, it's total shit
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
Gauke is one of those Westminster liberals who gets his coffee served by the nice Eastern European migrant, gets ferried around by perfectly friendly Pakistani or Afghan Uber drivers and may see an Indian doctor from time to time. He probably thinks that those of use who want to reduce immigration and send people back are racist bigots and have been brainwashed by Nige or Trump etc...
Yep
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
Gauke is right, you aren't going to win back voters from Farage trying to be even harder against immigration and the ECHR and anti woke than he is as he will always out populist right you.
They are better off trying to hold the 2024 Sunak voters who are primarily centre right and focused on the economy and dislike Labour's tax rises, that would keep them on 24%.
Then if Farage loses next time and steps down Jenrick could have a chance to reunite the right but not before.
Ironically it is probably better for Tories as above if Labour win the next GE than Reform, at least if Labour win, preferably with no majority, that would prove Farage can't win enough swing voters who used to vote Conservative when the Conservatives won.
If Reform win most seats or a majority though then under FPTP sooner or later the Tories likely end up taken over by Farage
You seem to put party before country, which is despicable
I apologise if I misconstrue you, but this appears to be the case. You would happily have the UK endure a second catastrophic Labour government as long as it helps the Tories recover?
Fuck that shit. We are one year into Starmer and look at the state of the motherland
Plod telling people to have a go is the most irresponsible advice I've heard. People will get injured or sued or prosecuted. If robbers know people will try to stop them they won't stop robbing they will just build in the need to handle the stoppers. And they will likely both be tooled up and handier than the would be heroes.
I get your logic, but I am not sure it's true
The shoplifters near me tend to be scrawny druggies or blatant opportunists, or maybe the really young working as a gang
They don't look like people who would happily shank someone if confronted with physicality, I suspect they'd drop everything and run. Why get in a knife fight over £50 worth of ribeye steak?
I would not want to be the first person to test this theory, however
They have nothing to lose and are desperate for the next fix. Prison is probably a safer environment for them.
Rather you than me.
Nah, it's bollocks
Recall, I was a smack addict for 10 years. I know - or knew (many are dead) - plenty of drug addicts
You are very seldom that desperate for a fix you will almost-pointlessly risk getting beaten up. And if that became the likely outcome of any shoplifting foray, they would stop doing it immediately
Trouble is, they would turn to different crimes, but that's not the argument we are having. IF shoplifting was physically and painfully hindered, it would cease. The rewards are not big enough
Our problem is that we have decriminalised shoplifting. That's it. We have simply invited every chancer to try it, with zero comeback
The shoplifter I tackled when I was 20 put up a bit of a fight. In retrospect, one of the most stupid things I have ever done and I was given a huge bollocking by my manager for it.
Comments
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/07/uk_microsoft_spending/
If not - what you need is more very expensive consultant advice. And a bit more centralisation.
The lack of 3rd runway at LHR is already costing billions in opportunity costs, and has been for years now. They’ve been doing ‘special spacing’ (read ‘planes closer together than almost anywhere else in the world’) between aircraft on approach for decades, but means that on a foggy morning dozens of planes end up sent somewhere else or don’t take off.
I’ll keep referring to my story that Dubai’s Terminal 3 was built in less time than Heathrow’s Terminal 5 planning inquiry. Same scope of project, new buildings on an extant airfield with some access roads. Dubai built it while London talked about building it.
The 3rd runway is going to be even worse, there wil be a decade of talking about it before we see a spade in the ground.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/12/uk-conservatives-badly-placed-next-election-david-gauke
...The party was ignoring heartland voters in the home counties who had turned in droves to the Liberal Democrats and was spending too much time fighting on Reform UK’s turf, he added.
“If the next election is going to be about immigration and the war on the woke, it’s not going to be the Conservative party that are the beneficiaries of that. It will be Nigel Farage and Reform,” he said, in an interview with the Guardian. “Trying to make those issues more salient is a strategic blunder. First and foremost the Conservatives need to fight the next election on the economy.”..
Yes the amount appears excessive, but they’re not buying off-the-shelf they have a whole load of requirements related to data. They probably got MS to build a data centre specifically for the government, and includes services like live real-time backups.
The only reasonable alternative is Amazon AWS, which would cost similar.
People just aren’t listening to the Tories, and the fact is that they’re not going to get a hearing until memories fade, or they become the main alternative again due to a Reform collapse. I know there are a lot of commentators who like to kid themselves that a centrist Tory party would be popular right now, but the truth is, it wouldn’t be. It might even be less popular, if it shies away from discussing the current right wing talking points.
Wasn't our own @Gallowgate asking for things to do in northern France only yesterday?
Have Jenrick and him ever been seen together?
Erm.
Gauke is still probably right.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/timeseries/g6nq/pse
Is there a breakdown of where these extra peeps work?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/465718.stm
The gilts aren't guaranteed to yield 5%, just inflation + 0.125%.
So if inflation falls far enough by the end of the period, you won't have made any money.
[I assume this is the gilt in question: https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/T29/united-kingdom/company-page ]
I'd be in favour of both eye tests for over 80s and something for cognitive response, perhaps similar to the hazard perception test?
There are many aspects of driving in the UK which should be reformed. First, B + E tests should never have been scrapped (car plus trailer), this was the Tories idea to get rid of to cut a backlog of driving tests and lorry tests. Result, more inexperienced drivers on our roads towing. Also no one passing a car test should be automatically allowed to drive a 28T tractor and trailer outfit without sitting a full tractor test.
Even DT readers realise there are issues at the end of the age spectrum we need to do better on, with cases like the one I linked to in Edinburgh. I agree the law needs changed to make roads safer
Cutting jobs and cutting regulations go hand in hand, you just can't see the forest for the trees.
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/nhs-workforce-nutshell#:~:text=The NHS in England currently,time equivalent (FTE) basis.
My Trust is reducing its workforce by about 6% this year under current plans and budgets. The 10 year NHS plan has further staff shrinkage at acute Trusts built in already. It's not obvious who and where those will be, and not likely to give much scope for further cuts. Certainly not if Streeting wants the waiting lists down by the GE.
Accounts of passers by detaining criminals for the police used to be so common that they weren’t of note.
Officers pursuing the Sidney Street robbers borrowed firearms from the public….
I suspect that the answer was to go on the economy, wait for the government to mishandle that (all governments mishandle the economy eventually), but in the meantime go practical and pragmatic and attempt to strangle Farage at birth by pointing out that he's a clueless gobshite, with no realistic plans for anything. It might not herald a return to government in 2029, but it might leave a platform to work with in 2034.
The trouble with going on immigration and woke is that it just gives Reform even more oxygen and credibility. As things stand, the old blue team are going to be even further from government after the next election than they are now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_fmUYyWSyE
Co-incidence? I think not...
Why don't we live in a Paradise?
If I were Kemi (or whoever replaces her) this is the big pledge I would make in the run up to the election. Net zero immigration from year one, "no more new visas", no ability for existing visa low wage holders to rollover their current visas, student numbers severely restricted, no citizenship or ILR without a highly paid job or marriage, raising the income bar for bringing a foreign spouse, increasing the mandatory NHS charge for all visa holders and instant deportation to home or third countries for boat arrivals, no ability to claim asylum from within the country, end family reunion immigration immediately on day one for all but spouses and dependent children, require a very high income bar for it too. Rewrite/repeal the HRA to enable this
These are the kind of day one policies that would get the Tories a hearing from their natural voters. Gauke doesn't understand what Tory voters have been asking, he lives in his liberal Westminster bubble and speaks to people like him who are in favour of migration and are the type to call those against it racist or bigots.
My bete noir is the "showman's exception".
Yes - one item debating online that surprised me about 17 year olds and graduated licences was pushback from tradesmen wanting the teenage apprentice to be able to continue to drive the long wheelbase high top Transit.
I'd go for at least a hazard perception test every 10 years for all of us ... at licence card renewal time.
Besides which, as a net financial contributor to the EU, we were employing them anyway.
Or is that a problem for after day three?
I'm afraid I have only cliché to offer for today's quota. It's too bloody hot to take interesting photos. 34 degrees today in Zurich, and no air con.
Really?
The NHS encourages malingering fatties who are of no benefit. We should incentivise slender fitness with hard cash
Or would safeguarding be binned too.
An example is his proposed case-by-case risk assessment for trans women in woman's prisons, following his adviser. That's an opportunity for Kemi to out-Trump him should she choose.
MattW's chart of limits across Europe showed that no one had a no alcohol in blood rule, and the obvious reason for that is that someone driving after eating an overripe apple would fall foul.
Effectively zero still had to be a number and the 0.02 - not straight after 1 drink - seems a reasonable level for that.
It's like when we detect for toxins in harmless picogram levels and, lo, we find them everywhere, shock horror.
I do try to keep my driving to some kind of effective zero. I don't know how rough ball park this method is, but the know what you drank, know when you stopped and after you stopped give an hour for every unit (units aren't really that hard to figure) before driving. Puts a strict upper limit on how much booze in a session when driving the next morning.
I heartily endorse this policy.
You're literally kidding yourself if you believe the direction of travel on regulation and freedom has been anything but more restrictive and for more oversight. It's why the UK economy is less dynamic than it used to be. Look at how much of a disaster HS2 has been, or Hinckley Point C, or the new proposed £78bn nuclear power plant, or how long it took for the regulators to approve SMRs from RollS Royce. You have this narrative you've built up that because politicians have been demanding less regulation that the state has actually delivered that, it has done the exact opposite.
Trump plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence—literally on Independence Day, July 4— by hosting a cage fight between two men at the White House
https://bsky.app/profile/amanbatheja.bsky.social/post/3lw7zcygopk24
Polls show the voters are concerned about immigration more than any other issue, Gauke may wish otherwise, but there it is. PLUS all the other things voters worry about are downstream from immigration - NHS, housing, crime. Sorting all these means, possibly above all else, sorting immigration
He's like someone saying in 1358 "voters seem really concerned about recovery from the Black Death, but the "Let's Recover From The Black Death Party" already dominate that vote, so we need to be the pro-falconry party, with an emphasis on correct leather gauntlets"
The shoplifters near me tend to be scrawny druggies or blatant opportunists, or maybe the really young working as a gang
They don't look like people who would happily shank someone if confronted with physicality, I suspect they'd drop everything and run. Why get in a knife fight over £50 worth of ribeye steak?
I would not want to be the first person to test this theory, however
And I'm pretty sure soliciting arson on a building with people in it has always been a crime.
I despise them, and I am glad the Tory party is going to die, taking down the likes of him, as it sinks
ALSO: how can they be this stupid??? It's mind-boggling
The Lincoln Project
@ProjectLincoln
One thing most Americans can agree on: the want the Epstein Files released.
https://x.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1955358633174380689
Accidents involving heavy trailers (which is what the B+E rules prohibited) are negligible. Insofar as there is a problem with accidents involving trailers at-all (which we don't really) the main problem is large surface area lightweight caravans towed behind cars which aren't heavy enough getting crosswinded by lorries on motorways. And that's always been legal without a B+E so long as the combination isn't very heavy.
Again, zero point in making people take a tractor test. There aren't many accidents, and almost none of them are had by people who aren't perfectly capable of passing a tractor test. Most of the lads running round at a million miles an hour in FastTracs have taken a tractor test anyway, the farm lads all do it at 16 so they've a means of driving home from the pub.
Making everyone do a tractor test just stuffs up people like me who jump in a tractor for a couple of weeks a year to help my mates cart in silage via 1/4 mile of single track lane (risk of serious accident approximately nil).
Rather you than me.
Recall, I was a smack addict for 10 years. I know - or knew (many are dead) - plenty of drug addicts
You are very seldom that desperate for a fix you will almost-pointlessly risk getting beaten up. And if that became the likely outcome of any shoplifting foray, they would stop doing it immediately
Trouble is, they would turn to different crimes, but that's not the argument we are having. IF shoplifting was physically and painfully hindered, it would cease. The rewards are not big enough
Our problem is that we have decriminalised shoplifting. That's it. We have simply invited every chancer to try it, with zero comeback
JD Vance is to meet Nigel Farage on Wednesday for breakfast in the Cotswolds as he mixes business with pleasure during his UK summer holiday.
The US vice-president, his wife Usha and their three children spent the weekend with his friend David Lammy, the foreign secretary, at Chevening. The Times understands that on Monday, Vance enjoyed a barbecue with his friend James Orr, the Cambridge academic; Danny Kruger, the Tory MP; and Thomas Skinner, the former Apprentice contestant, with whom the American has bonded over social media.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/c6100f35-03fb-4c45-a400-1f6172001c12?shareToken=66bffb6161a299c6064af72d077865ca
Kemi has an oddly strong position to speak about immigration, being one herself but she needs to use it properly and goad the left into targeting her so she gets into the news. She needs her "stab the country in the front" moment with Starmer close to the election.
He was a mainstream Tory just a few years ago, now there is no place for him.
That's why the LDs triumphed across the South and Southwest. Reform are winning in the old coalfields and the saxon shore.
So there is no future for the Conservatives.
Trouble is (as I feared) she is a lightweight, she hasn't got the intellectual heft NOR the political wiles. She can't think on her feet, she's not got a persuasive presence, she doesn't connect with voters, she's not a great speaker, she's not that smart. Despite all that, I like her, she'd be a good junior Cabinet Ninister for Hunting Down The Woke, but as LOTO or PM manque? - nah
Jenrick seems the only choice, or Katie Lam. But even then it is likely a fruitless cause in 2028-9. and possibly forever
They are better off trying to hold the 2024 Sunak voters who are primarily centre right and focused on the economy and dislike Labour's tax rises, that would keep them on 24%.
Then if Farage loses next time and steps down Jenrick could have a chance to reunite the right but not before.
Ironically it is probably better for Tories as above if Labour win the next GE than Reform, at least if Labour win, preferably with no majority, that would prove Farage can't win enough swing voters who used to vote Conservative when the Conservatives won.
If Reform win most seats or a majority though then under FPTP sooner or later the Tories likely end up taken over by Farage
Also, those apparently safe Lib Dem seats in the S and SW are all going to swing right as the Boriswave and the boat people ripple out across the shires and boroughs. You can literally watch it happening. Labour are dispersing them all and it's all going to get WORSE, not better
Withdrawing unemployment benefit from convicted terrorists (their chief source of money to live on, apart from illegal, cash in had jobs) was considered but rejected.
Banning SF was suggested after the Brighton Bombing. Thatcher dismissed the suggestion instantly.
Meanwhile people cutting the fence at Greenham got arrested and complained about too much sugar in the tea they were given. Then released.
I apologise if I misconstrue you, but this appears to be the case. You would happily have the UK endure a second catastrophic Labour government as long as it helps the Tories recover?
Fuck that shit. We are one year into Starmer and look at the state of the motherland