HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
How quickly do you think these people organise and leave? It’s not a quick process for numerous reasons so the full effects won’t be known for at least another year.
People have to decide where to move to - culturally similar like crown dependencies or zero tax in ME? They have to find homes to move to, schools for children, unwind businesses, start setting up new businesses and investments if the new home demands that as part of the deal, they have to decide whether to sell UK property holdings or rent them out hoping for a future gov that’s more friendly or a better market for high end property.
Also, losing 25% of a tax base who also likely bring in business, are likely to invest in business in the UK and spend highly in the UK is not good.
I would suggest holding off popping the champagne corks for a while.
I do love the rich. They usually have far more money than they will ever need and fight tooth and nail to keep it.
Friend of mine is comfortably off - retired this year not touched his Uni pension at all - no need. He is just having 20 solar panels and a battery added to the roof so that he can reduce his electricity bill of 170 a month to nothing, and expects to pay back the costs in 6 years.
Perhaps this is why rich people are rich when the rest of us plebs aren't?
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
Only A QUARTER OF NON DOMS LEAVING, all of whom will be huge net contributors, is hardly something to cheer....!!!!
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
How quickly do you think these people organise and leave? It’s not a quick process for numerous reasons so the full effects won’t be known for at least another year.
People have to decide where to move to - culturally similar like crown dependencies or zero tax in ME? They have to find homes to move to, schools for children, unwind businesses, start setting up new businesses and investments if the new home demands that as part of the deal, they have to decide whether to sell UK property holdings or rent them out hoping for a future gov that’s more friendly or a better market for high end property.
Also, losing 25% of a tax base who also likely bring in business, are likely to invest in business in the UK and spend highly in the UK is not good.
I would suggest holding off popping the champagne corks for a while.
The non dom regime was ancient, outdated and pretty unusual globally as well as bizarre as it incentivised people to keep assets out of the country. It was well overdue an overhaul.
The main mistake was extending it to IHT on trusts. That was a last straw for some.
One thing government could do, fairly cheaply, that would potentially pay off many times over is to extend the currently too-short foreign income and gains exemption for newcomers. Make it 10 years instead and you’ll make the UK very attentive for incoming CEOs or investors who will have time to build up infrastructure and talent around them.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
Amazing thing Brexit as it has somehow infected all the EU with the same problems which it has apparently caused in this country.
Or perhaps Europe's problems are more fundamental and have sod all to do with Brexit and even less to do with Farage.
Lol, the NeverAcceptBrexit crew won't be able to accept this.
The population at large have accepted it happened as it had to. Hilariously, I find it only gets brought up at dinner parties after the 4th bottle comes out, now. Often to tutting and disapproving looks from those who moved on years ago.
It's perfectly possible to 'accept' Brexit, whilst still acknowledging it was sold on a whole mass of incompatible lies, and that it has not turned out well for the country so far. Which is a shame, as it could have.
If there's a 'NeverAcceptBrexit crew', then there's also a "BrexitIsntResposibleForAnything crew", who are equally deluded.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
Hold on a second, Isn't the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, is the guy / group who wrote the advice that the UK government used to form this policy in the first place i.e. this isn't an independent analysis. That is them marking their own homework.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
Hold on a second, Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, is the guy and group who wrote the advice that the UK government used to form this policy in the first place i.e. this isn't an independent analysis. That is them marking their own homework.
It saddens me, but this site - this pub - is dying. Visitors are in major decline
The deadly PB centrist Dads chased away @williamglenn and he has not returned. And he was an absolutely key, crucial commenter. You stupid fucking fools banned him, simply because you didn't like his rightwing opinions. And now look where we are. He didn't even break any rules - he was banned for "wrongthink"
You are utter fucking imbeciles. You have turned this place into Bluesky. And no one uses Bluesky. Morons
I don’t know if that is the reason, but it does feel like the peak is behind us. In the early to mid 2010s, leading up to the referendum it was brilliant on here, despite me being banned about a hundred times for one thing or another.
Richard Nabavi, Tim, Antifrank, Southam Observer, Charles, Mike Smithson, Plato; these were big characters that have been written out or left and not replaced. Can’t think why really, but it is a shame
The site was at its worse during the 2024 Presidential election, when anything anti-Trump was cheered and anything pro-Trump (i.e. that he might win) was rounded on and shouted down such that some people stopped posting.
That was totally unforgivable. It's the sort of thing that could have led to a splinter site - the "real" politicalbetting.com - as the original one was recognised to have lost its way.
Of course this is where JD Vance has a point, all these anti-Trump PBers getting cancelled by the PB blob, or PB Trumpers taking their bat and ball home does demonstrate free speech is dead.
Isn't what you are describing actually free speech? Anti Trumpers were in the majority, argued their point forcefully and thus took a majority of comment inches. People may have been shouted down but they weren't banned. What you seem to want is a limitation of free speech where a minority view is given protected space. That's a perfectly civilised thing to want but don't get high and mighty about free speech being dead.
I was being mischievous. The mods on here do a magnificent job of drawing the line when financial jeopardy is triggered.
JD Vance and a number of the like-minded on here are outraged when the likes of Lucy Connolly are punished for inciting riots, but more than comfortable when Just Stop Oil are dragged off the Dartford Bridge.
I say a plague on both their houses, but right wingers see Lucy Connolly being banged up for inciting violence as an assault on Freedom of Speech. I believe anyone is free to say whatever they like, but if it breaches societal rules ( not necessarily laws, when the law is an ass) they suffer the consequences.
On topic, I doubt Labour will win, but there may be a smidgen of value in 5/1.
Does tactical voting really work in an electoral system like this though?
It could work in the constituency part.
I might be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the whole voting structure was changing for the next election, and they are binning the 'constituency' vs 'top-up' differential. Instead it will be Proportional Representation, with Closed Party Lists, in 16 separate constituency's (created by pairing 2 Westminster constituency's together), with 6 people elected from each constituency and no balancing out. Firstly this means that there are 96 seats not the current 60 - and secondly it means that tactical voting really isn't (or shouldn't be) a thing.
Yes, but also no. Yes, the constituency seats are gone and the next election with just be a straightforward list system. This makes tactical voting largely unnecessary.
But it is perhaps an issue for the smaller parties where the question is whether they'll manage any seats in an area or not. They are using 16-seat areas, so you need about 6% to guarantee winning a seat. That's about where the Greens and LibDems are polling, with some smaller Welsh parties below that. There's an argument you should vote tactically. If you are a LibDem supporter in Afan Ogwr Rhondda, would you do better to vote Labour or Plaid? What if you support Propel or Gwlad?
Also, even in countries with PR where tactical voting is largely unnecessary, it's quite common to see voters coagulating around two main parties. Coming first in an election carries a lot of moral authority and there can be a desire to see one's side be first.
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
How quickly do you think these people organise and leave? It’s not a quick process for numerous reasons so the full effects won’t be known for at least another year.
People have to decide where to move to - culturally similar like crown dependencies or zero tax in ME? They have to find homes to move to, schools for children, unwind businesses, start setting up new businesses and investments if the new home demands that as part of the deal, they have to decide whether to sell UK property holdings or rent them out hoping for a future gov that’s more friendly or a better market for high end property.
Also, losing 25% of a tax base who also likely bring in business, are likely to invest in business in the UK and spend highly in the UK is not good.
I would suggest holding off popping the champagne corks for a while.
The non dom regime was ancient, outdated and pretty unusual globally as well as bizarre as it incentivised people to keep assets out of thf country. It was well overdue an overhaul.
The main mistake was extending it to IHT on trusts.
One thing government could do, fairly cheaply, that would potentially pay off many times over is to extend the currently too-short foreign income and gains exemption for newcomers. Make it 10 years instead and you’ll make the UK very attentive for incoming CEOs or investors who will have time to build up infrastructure and talent around them.
Agreed. The biggest complaint everyone I speak to has is always about IHT and CGT. They will take hits on income tax but get very bent out of shape about what they have to hand over to the state if they sell their businesses and properties or what their children miss out on through IHT.
The UK should look at allowing thousands of people to live in the UK on a low fixed income tax, no or low CGT and zero IHT on condition they bring businesses that employ x number of people or pay x corporation tax.
It wouldn’t negatively affect 99% of the population’s lives but attract in business, employment, spending and growth. They can’t because people would scream about it being “unfair” but they should - it’s money that would otherwise be going elsewhere.
Reform UK have come up with an excellent idea to save money. They want outer London boroughs like Bromley to abandon the GLA and go back to Kent. This means cashstrapped councils like Bromley will be able to stop forking out free GLA travelcards for hundreds of thousands of pensioners. That's a Reform UK idea I can support.
Strangely, Spelthorne has always wanted to be a London Borough instead of being part of Surrey and there are occasional rumblings all round the edges that somehow the grass is greener on the other side.
The truth is Bromley looks toward London (it's a commuter suburb) rather than to Kent. Needless to say, even if Reform win control of Bromley next year (which isn't likely), it would still be a long journey toward the objective Reform want so like most of Reform's ideas, it has a superficial attraction but rather like ice cream in this week's weather, that attraction will qwuickly melt away and it will all look very messy.
As usual, you are also wrong about the travelcards themselves. You have the Oyster 60+ Travelcards (so non pensioners can also get free travel and it's a useful incentive to keep older people in work which may or mat not be a good thing) and then you have the Freedom Passes for those aged over 66.
I'm also interested in how you think you are going to sell the idea blind people and people over 90 shouldn't be entitled to free travel - I don't think we are at that level of financial stringency with our flourishing economy.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
Yeah, I've got 4 students today. 2 x French, 2 x Russian. I've got high expectations for all of them.
Don't forget to only advise them to read at university if they are the offspring of PB Tories. If they are simply social climbing peasants please point them in the direction of an NVQ in plastering.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
Amazing thing Brexit as it has somehow infected all the EU with the same problems which it has apparently caused in this country.
Or perhaps Europe's problems are more fundamental and have sod all to do with Brexit and even less to do with Farage.
Lol, the NeverAcceptBrexit crew won't be able to accept this.
The population at large have accepted it happened as it had to. Hilariously, I find it only gets brought up at dinner parties after the 4th bottle comes out, now. Often to tutting and disapproving looks from those who moved on years ago.
Are those 'not moved on' types those who at the merest mention of the B word bellow about the anti democratic outrage of no referendum on Maastricht and the disgusting MPs who refused to back whatever magical Brexit bollox the Tory party had made up on any given month? At least one of them on here, if he hasn't in fact moved on.
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
How quickly do you think these people organise and leave? It’s not a quick process for numerous reasons so the full effects won’t be known for at least another year.
People have to decide where to move to - culturally similar like crown dependencies or zero tax in ME? They have to find homes to move to, schools for children, unwind businesses, start setting up new businesses and investments if the new home demands that as part of the deal, they have to decide whether to sell UK property holdings or rent them out hoping for a future gov that’s more friendly or a better market for high end property.
Also, losing 25% of a tax base who also likely bring in business, are likely to invest in business in the UK and spend highly in the UK is not good.
I would suggest holding off popping the champagne corks for a while.
The non dom regime was ancient, outdated and pretty unusual globally as well as bizarre as it incentivised people to keep assets out of thf country. It was well overdue an overhaul.
The main mistake was extending it to IHT on trusts.
One thing government could do, fairly cheaply, that would potentially pay off many times over is to extend the currently too-short foreign income and gains exemption for newcomers. Make it 10 years instead and you’ll make the UK very attentive for incoming CEOs or investors who will have time to build up infrastructure and talent around them.
Agreed. The biggest complaint everyone I speak to has is always about IHT and CGT. They will take hits on income tax but get very bent out of shape about what they have to hand over to the state if they sell their businesses and properties or what their children miss out on through IHT.
The UK should look at allowing thousands of people to live in the UK on a low fixed income tax, no or low CGT and zero IHT on condition they bring businesses that employ x number of people or pay x corporation tax.
It wouldn’t negatively affect 99% of the population’s lives but attract in business, employment, spending and growth. They can’t because people would scream about it being “unfair” but they should - it’s money that would otherwise be going elsewhere.
Excellent suggestion.
Unfortunately your prediction is almost certainly correct. It won't happen because the Burghers of e.g. Bootle will scream that its unfair.
The petty mindedness of the left-leaning masses in Britain in relation to 'fairness' will almost certainly end up bankrupting the country.
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
How quickly do you think these people organise and leave? It’s not a quick process for numerous reasons so the full effects won’t be known for at least another year.
People have to decide where to move to - culturally similar like crown dependencies or zero tax in ME? They have to find homes to move to, schools for children, unwind businesses, start setting up new businesses and investments if the new home demands that as part of the deal, they have to decide whether to sell UK property holdings or rent them out hoping for a future gov that’s more friendly or a better market for high end property.
Also, losing 25% of a tax base who also likely bring in business, are likely to invest in business in the UK and spend highly in the UK is not good.
I would suggest holding off popping the champagne corks for a while.
I do love the rich. They usually have far more money than they will ever need and fight tooth and nail to keep it.
Friend of mine is comfortably off - retired this year not touched his Uni pension at all - no need. He is just having 20 solar panels and a battery added to the roof so that he can reduce his electricity bill of 170 a month to nothing, and expects to pay back the costs in 6 years.
Perhaps this is why rich people are rich when the rest of us plebs aren't?
There are all sorts of 'rich' people. There are those who are rich now, and whose kids will not be because of the way they spend. There are those who have inherited money from a long line of ancestors and are terrified of not passing it onto the next generation. There are those who got lucky; and those who worked like the devil to get their money. And many more 'types' besides.
But I do think that if you have money, it is easier to make more money. And the more money you have, the easier it is to make more.
"With the aim of boosting backbench morale..." doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
I thought they had already re-re-re-anounced it?
They announced it without any money being attached - this time there appears to be some money attached...
Now they just need to work out how to sort out a train network because if you are building 1 tunnel you may as well keep them around and build another couple of tunnels at the same time for local trains.
If you finish a tunnel project one week the next tunnel project should be ready to go the following week. Look at how it was done in Norway and the Faroes.
Instead we dither for a couple of years until the contractors get bored and wander off, then wonder why everything now costs 3x as much.
Also look at Copenhagen where a lot of metro has been built over the past 10 years..
That's not really the entire status imo wrt Metros. It's also a failed national politics.
Very little has been built here because we have had 10-15 years of short-termist slash and burn Government, and if funding is not for example finalised until have way through the spending period - then of course it is chaos, chaos imposed from the centre.
Exceptions are where we have longer term political structures with real funding over a period, or Govt involvement. We had that from under Thatcher, Major, Blair, in measure.
And we have a whole series of metro and tram systems in major cities, and London. Just not in the South. Where's the Portsmouth or Southampton Metro, for example? They could have done that whilst Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester were building their light. Why did they not?
But if local and regional government is slashed by a third or so across the board, wtf do you expect to happen?
That's why imo the current version of the Conservative Party needs to die, or to recreate itself as something that's fit to be in our society.
The planning system is not working? Well for years the rhetoric was that such is bad, and it was left to wither on the vine, so of course it is broken. No shit, Sherlock. And they have just had another 15 years and wrecked it all.
Is there a single area of national life that was not flat on its back in July 2024?
When I lived in Stockton on Tees the local Tories were endlessly knocking the town down. The Labour-led council had a clear vision for regeneration, bitterly opposed by the Tories. Redoing the high street? Waste of money! Refurbishing and reopening the only mid-size theatre between Leeds and Newcastle? A white elephant! Building a council owned hotel? Nobody will stay there! Buying and bulldozing empty shops to make a smaller busier high street? Madness!
Every single thing has worked. Stockton Globe is a huge success as is the Hampton by Hilton. Stockton hosts its annual Riverside festival which pulls in performers from around the globe. The shuttered shops have been flattened and a riverside park is going in.
The key word is *investment*. Tories don't understand that the part the broke the most in the UK is that they turned investment into a dirty word. Persuaded people that the state can't invest, can't own, is incompetent. As other states sold us electricity and ran transport and delivered parcels here in the UK. Persuaded business that investment would be a waste of time - why spend money on a foreign-owned UK asset when speculation will see it rise in value anyway? Go look at who owns so many shuttered high street properties. And crippled the public sector and national and local level so that we can't afford teachers and can't afford your operation and can't afford to fill in pot holes or get rid of the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement.
The Tories literally broke this country. Whilst slamming us with record peacetime taxes to boot. Its no wonder that people are laughing at their attempts this week to claim that their mess is actually Labour's mess actually. Then again Labour have fallen into the same "can't afford it" trap and are continuing the misery.
I'm sure you believe the bit in bold, but its not really true in isolation. Lots of governments have made lots of decisions, some not very wise. I'm truly pissed off that we didn't build nuclear power a la France and thus are so heavily reliant on fossil fuels still, so that the Ukraine war caused a huge issue here. I think you fail to credit covid for the disaster it was for ALL economies. Our government, like most western governments, chose to open the borrowing taps to get through and now we have to pay the costs.
And as for the word 'investment'. IIRC it was a Labour chancellor who turned government spending into 'investment'.
Its not just the Tories fault.
I'm very clear that both parts of the LabCon have failed. But where people today say "this country is broken" and list issues, all of those came to a head under the stewardship of the Tories. They inherited structural issues and made them much much worse.
At least Labour tried to accept they had got things wrong - and Ed Milliband was vilified for doing so. Badenoch? Screeching about prison releases. Erm, Alex Chalk ring any bells Kemi? The "Pray Date"?
Since the pandemic, everything has been crap, but in terms of the public sector, the 2010-19 pre-pandemic Conservatives did much better than 1997-2010 Labour. Public sector productivity under the Conservatives increased by 0.8%/year under the former, having fallen by 0.25% under Labour as Brown lavished "investment" on the public sector, i.e. shovelled money towards his union and contractor friends..
As ever, measuring productivity is challenging, but government is very bad at spending money effectively, but the public sector becomes more efficient (or slightly less inefficient) when you control it tightly.
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
Only A QUARTER OF NON DOMS LEAVING, all of whom will be huge net contributors, is hardly something to cheer....!!!!
The point is that this is roughly what was expected, and the increase in revenue resulting from the higher taxes on the remaining non-doms more than makes up for the revenue lost from those who have left. So it is indeed something to cheer.
Reform UK have come up with an excellent idea to save money. They want outer London boroughs like Bromley to abandon the GLA and go back to Kent. This means cashstrapped councils like Bromley will be able to stop forking out free GLA travelcards for hundreds of thousands of pensioners. That's a Reform UK idea I can support.
Bexley would also be joining Kent presumably and Havering and maybe Redbridge Essex and perhaps even Kingson upon Thames Surrey?
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
Only A QUARTER OF NON DOMS LEAVING, all of whom will be huge net contributors, is hardly something to cheer....!!!!
The point is that this is roughly what was expected, and the increase in revenue from the higher taxes on the remaining non-doms more than makes up for the revenue lost from those who have left. So it is indeed something to cheer.
Assuming nothing changes.....which is a rather brave assumption given the events of the past few years.
I think the likeliest outcome for the Senedd elections next year is Reform win most seats but Labour stay in power after doing a deal with Plaid as Labour plus Plaid have more AMs than Reform and the Tories, with whichever of Labour or Plaid wins more seats providing the next First Minister.
That could also be an omen for the next GE, while most polls give Reform most seats they are certainly well short of the 35-40%+ Farage would need to be on to make a clear majority likely, especially if LD and Green voters tactically vote Labour in the end in Labour held marginal seats to keep Reform out. It is perfectly possible therefore that at the next GE Reform win a majority in England, or Reform and the Tories combined at least win a majority in England but Labour stay in government as UK wide Labour and the SNP and Plaid combined win more seats in Scotland and Wales than Reform and the Tories combined do and with the LD seats won in England that gives Starmer enough MPs in a hung parliament to back him as PM over Farage
That is probably a fair analysis, but don't forget Labour are a uniquely unpopular incumbent, particularly if you add the last twelve Westminster months into the mix.
Like Rupert Lowe we are also mindful of Afghans arriving on our beaches in Zodiac inflatable rib boats.
OK - so having just had a quick play with a d'Hondt calculator it's going to be interesting and exact orders in seats will actually matter given the nature of the number of parties and the 6 seat constituency size. Take a theoretical seat which is a 3 way battle Lab, PC, Reform - which votes as follows: Lab 26%, PC 25%, Reform 24%, Con 15%, LD 5%, Green 3%, Others 2%. With only 6 seats available, then LD and below don't win anything, Lab, PC, Reform, Con all win 1 seat initially - and then the last 2 seats go to Lab / PC if they just finish ahead of Reform. Equally, a 'Valleys' type seat with Lab 45%, PC 25%, Reform 15%, Con 10% Others 5% means that Lab get 3, PC 2, Reform 1 in terms of seats.
tl;dr - you need 12-15% in any constituency to be likely to get a seat, 24-30% odd to be confident of getting a second seat - and (depending on the split of votes to parties below 15% that are thus wasted) something like 40% to get a third. I think that the chance of Labour getting most seats is better than 5/1 - but it'll likely be one of those 'value losers' that we all enjoy so much.
Yes its quite interesting, as well as total votes you need to work out where the smaller parties might meet thresholds - the new system is a rare case of FPTP vote inefficiency being much more efficient for D'Hondt list PR if you achieve double figures % nationally. Hence the Tories if they maintain bare minimum core vote in Wales stand to pick up some sixth/lower places and will aim/hope for two in Clwyd and (only if they get a really good performance in their strongest seat of Monmouth) Monmouth/Torfaen. For the LDs and Greens its harder - Greens maybe get threshold somewhere in Cardiff but nowhere else unless weird vote splits emerge, LDs on a great night could get 2 in the Brecon pair but probably one, and they could get one in Ceredigion and one in Cardiff but its hard to see any other chances. Labour will benefit from votes everywhere at 'seat or 2' level but their relative unpopularity will restrict them from going over probably 25 seats. Plaid will get loads in their strongholds but have some zero zones. Reform will pick up somethimg pretty much everywhere.
“I have taken a break precisely because I got fed up with wading through Leon’s shit; most of the content he spams into this forum nowadays consists either of repetitive bigoted vomit, self-obsessed wank, or gratuitous abuse. There is no analysis or intelligence or insight, at all. Day after day, it just becomes tiresome; PB should be about more than one man’s lifelong attempt to compensate for his under-endowment.
In no way can my absence be interpreted as any support whatsoever for Leon’s thesis that he’s the only racist left in the village.
I saw Leon’s photos of his bits and bobs from across the world; the most valuable souvenir you can get from any travel is a broader perspective, yet it is the one thing that he never manages to bring home.”
That’s all well and good, but on the upside I got you to shut up and leave, so it’s kinda swings and roundabouts?
I think the likeliest outcome for the Senedd elections next year is Reform win most seats but Labour stay in power after doing a deal with Plaid as Labour plus Plaid have more AMs than Reform and the Tories, with whichever of Labour or Plaid wins more seats providing the next First Minister.
That could also be an omen for the next GE, while most polls give Reform most seats they are certainly well short of the 35-40%+ Farage would need to be on to make a clear majority likely, especially if LD and Green voters tactically vote Labour in the end in Labour held marginal seats to keep Reform out. It is perfectly possible therefore that at the next GE Reform win a majority in England, or Reform and the Tories combined at least win a majority in England but Labour stay in government as UK wide Labour and the SNP and Plaid combined win more seats in Scotland and Wales than Reform and the Tories combined do and with the LD seats won in England that gives Starmer enough MPs in a hung parliament to back him as PM over Farage
That is probably a fair analysis, but don't forget Labour are a uniquely unpopular incumbent, particularly if you add the last twelve Westminster months into the mix.
Like Rupert Lowe we are also mindful of Afghans arriving on our beaches in a Zodiac inflatable rib boats.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
There are enough Farages around the developed world at the moment to conclude he is very much a symptom rather than a cause. Albeit a pretty politically effective one.
All countries have their far right. Indeed I was surprised and amused in Senegal last year to hear they’ve elected a far right MP (that’s how my interlocutors described him) to their parliament, who stands on a platform of opposing immigration from Guinea Conakry on the basis they sponge off the state and cause crime.
It’s all down to that elephant chart of globalisation. The ultra rich have got richer everywhere, the poor and middle classes in developing countries have got much richer with the exception of the very poorest, and the working and lower middle classes in rich countries have relatively poorer. Meanwhile their populations have aged so fewer and fewer working age people find more and more pension entitlements and healthcare.
British exceptionalism means we like to claim either Britain is uniquely broken or the greatest country on earth (or occasionally both) when the truth is we’re all largely in it together.
One thing that I see when internationally travelling is how similar middle-class lifestyles are. I was recently in Zambia, where despite an average income of about $3000 the middle class lifestyles of Lusaka or Livingstone are pretty similar to any developed country, albeit a much smaller percentage of the population and massive rural poverty.
The worldwide division is really one of class rather than of nationality or religion.
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
Only A QUARTER OF NON DOMS LEAVING, all of whom will be huge net contributors, is hardly something to cheer....!!!!
The point is that this is roughly what was expected, and the increase in revenue from the higher taxes on the remaining non-doms more than makes up for the revenue lost from those who have left. So it is indeed something to cheer.
Assuming nothing changes.....which is a rather brave assumption given the events of the past few years.
Why is it assuming nothing changes? Things always change; that doesn't mean the future is completely unpredictable. In this case, it was assumed that around a quarter of non-doms would leave as a consequence of the taxes, which turned out to be roughly correct.
She is targeting daughters of soccer moms - girls with parents with a bit of money. Wholesome fun etc.
She realised that the parents would be taking the children to gigs - so made sure that her work appealed to them, to an extent. Same thing as children’s films needing something for the adults who will sit through them as well.
This is a vast, and growing market, around the world. Add in some genuine talent and a carefully crafted pubic image - billions of dollars flow.
Thanks. So it's essentially Kidzbopz for older girls.
Got it.
No. I think Swift is speaking to a set of life experiences different from the average PBer.
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
Only A QUARTER OF NON DOMS LEAVING, all of whom will be huge net contributors, is hardly something to cheer....!!!!
The point is that this is roughly what was expected, and the increase in revenue from the higher taxes on the remaining non-doms more than makes up for the revenue lost from those who have left. So it is indeed something to cheer.
Assuming nothing changes.....which is a rather brave assumption given the events of the past few years.
Why is it assuming nothing changes? Things always change; that doesn't mean the future is completely unpredictable. In this case, it was assumed that around a quarter of non-doms would leave as a consequence of the taxes, which turned out to be roughly correct.
Your implicit assumption in the preceding comment is, for example, that no more will leave (or not arrive) because of the changes in policy. Failure to account for changed behaviour in reaction to environment amongst humans is brave, or to put it another way, foolish.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
In terms of coalition partners maybe but if 10% of voters went to Yaxley Lennon's party that would leave Reform on 20% not 30% and likely not even winning most seats
I think the likeliest outcome for the Senedd elections next year is Reform win most seats but Labour stay in power after doing a deal with Plaid as Labour plus Plaid have more AMs than Reform and the Tories, with whichever of Labour or Plaid wins more seats providing the next First Minister.
That could also be an omen for the next GE, while most polls give Reform most seats they are certainly well short of the 35-40%+ Farage would need to be on to make a clear majority likely, especially if LD and Green voters tactically vote Labour in the end in Labour held marginal seats to keep Reform out. It is perfectly possible therefore that at the next GE Reform win a majority in England, or Reform and the Tories combined at least win a majority in England but Labour stay in government as UK wide Labour and the SNP and Plaid combined win more seats in Scotland and Wales than Reform and the Tories combined do and with the LD seats won in England that gives Starmer enough MPs in a hung parliament to back him as PM over Farage
That is probably a fair analysis, but don't forget Labour are a uniquely unpopular incumbent, particularly if you add the last twelve Westminster months into the mix.
Like Rupert Lowe we are also mindful of Afghans arriving on our beaches in a Zodiac inflatable rib boats.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
These problems are the same across Europe though, only Italy has broken out of the cycle and who's in charge there, oh right the "fascists" you and the rest of the liberals have been so angry about. The UK hardly stands alone as having these issues and many others.
Cycling Mikey, discussed over the last day or two btl, making good use of his platform to highlight a very common problem.
Can anyone spot the cycle lane? (Aside: you can't ride on painted lines because they have little grip and are dangerous, sometimes with mini changes of level at the edges). Down my way we have no painted cycle lanes; in the 1990s and 2000s they just shared lots of pavements, including where they are only about 1.1m wide. It's cycle infra designed by a traffic engineer who has not been trained or given a target and no money.
I think calling it a murder strip is a bit OTT. A cyclist can use the road like anyone else. The mistake is by some idiot thinking they can add a cycle lane to a narrow road.
Yes - "murder strip" is rhetoric, but it also addresses a reality in that many people driving motor vehicles assume that being "in the cycle" lane suspends any need to leave any space at all, so they drive the line; it's especially problematic with buses. And of course when a serious problem is simply ignored, achieving cut-through also requires measures to get attention - that's how politics works.
Lots of people who cycle have friends who have been put in hospital after experiences on such infrastructure. Another slogan is "Paint is not Infrastructure". The original Dutch turn to greater equality in the 1970s to de-emphasise motor traffic was around the slogan "Stop the Child Murder" (Stop de Kindermoord) around road deaths. *
The first public use in the UK I am aware of was when a contraflow cycle lane was proposed directly along the outside of a row of parked cars in Harrogate in 2018.
HM Revenue & Customs payroll data has found no evidence to suggest more non-doms left Britain in response to Rachel Reeves’ 2024 Budget than official predictions, according to people briefed on the findings.
[...]
Reeves was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility to expect 25 per cent of non-doms with trusts to quit the country in response to the crackdown on their tax status, which began under the Conservatives and intensified when Reeves became chancellor last year.
HMRC data now suggests this prediction is broadly correct, the people said, removing pressure on Reeves to reverse a Labour policy that is forecast to raise more than £4bn in 2026-27 and almost £6bn the following year.
Only A QUARTER OF NON DOMS LEAVING, all of whom will be huge net contributors, is hardly something to cheer....!!!!
The point is that this is roughly what was expected, and the increase in revenue from the higher taxes on the remaining non-doms more than makes up for the revenue lost from those who have left. So it is indeed something to cheer.
Assuming nothing changes.....which is a rather brave assumption given the events of the past few years.
Why is it assuming nothing changes? Things always change; that doesn't mean the future is completely unpredictable. In this case, it was assumed that around a quarter of non-doms would leave as a consequence of the taxes, which turned out to be roughly correct.
Your implicit assumption in the preceding comment is, for example, that no more will leave (or not arrive) because of the changes in policy. Failure to account for changed behaviour in reaction to environment amongst humans is brave, or to put it another way, foolish.
But they have accounted for changed behaviour; that's the whole point!
"With the aim of boosting backbench morale..." doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
I thought they had already re-re-re-anounced it?
They announced it without any money being attached - this time there appears to be some money attached...
Now they just need to work out how to sort out a train network because if you are building 1 tunnel you may as well keep them around and build another couple of tunnels at the same time for local trains.
If you finish a tunnel project one week the next tunnel project should be ready to go the following week. Look at how it was done in Norway and the Faroes.
Instead we dither for a couple of years until the contractors get bored and wander off, then wonder why everything now costs 3x as much.
Also look at Copenhagen where a lot of metro has been built over the past 10 years..
That's not really the entire status imo wrt Metros. It's also a failed national politics.
Very little has been built here because we have had 10-15 years of short-termist slash and burn Government, and if funding is not for example finalised until have way through the spending period - then of course it is chaos, chaos imposed from the centre.
Exceptions are where we have longer term political structures with real funding over a period, or Govt involvement. We had that from under Thatcher, Major, Blair, in measure.
And we have a whole series of metro and tram systems in major cities, and London. Just not in the South. Where's the Portsmouth or Southampton Metro, for example? They could have done that whilst Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester were building their light. Why did they not?
But if local and regional government is slashed by a third or so across the board, wtf do you expect to happen?
That's why imo the current version of the Conservative Party needs to die, or to recreate itself as something that's fit to be in our society.
The planning system is not working? Well for years the rhetoric was that such is bad, and it was left to wither on the vine, so of course it is broken. No shit, Sherlock. And they have just had another 15 years and wrecked it all.
Is there a single area of national life that was not flat on its back in July 2024?
When I lived in Stockton on Tees the local Tories were endlessly knocking the town down. The Labour-led council had a clear vision for regeneration, bitterly opposed by the Tories. Redoing the high street? Waste of money! Refurbishing and reopening the only mid-size theatre between Leeds and Newcastle? A white elephant! Building a council owned hotel? Nobody will stay there! Buying and bulldozing empty shops to make a smaller busier high street? Madness!
Every single thing has worked. Stockton Globe is a huge success as is the Hampton by Hilton. Stockton hosts its annual Riverside festival which pulls in performers from around the globe. The shuttered shops have been flattened and a riverside park is going in.
The key word is *investment*. Tories don't understand that the part the broke the most in the UK is that they turned investment into a dirty word. Persuaded people that the state can't invest, can't own, is incompetent. As other states sold us electricity and ran transport and delivered parcels here in the UK. Persuaded business that investment would be a waste of time - why spend money on a foreign-owned UK asset when speculation will see it rise in value anyway? Go look at who owns so many shuttered high street properties. And crippled the public sector and national and local level so that we can't afford teachers and can't afford your operation and can't afford to fill in pot holes or get rid of the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement.
The Tories literally broke this country. Whilst slamming us with record peacetime taxes to boot. Its no wonder that people are laughing at their attempts this week to claim that their mess is actually Labour's mess actually. Then again Labour have fallen into the same "can't afford it" trap and are continuing the misery.
I'm sure you believe the bit in bold, but its not really true in isolation. Lots of governments have made lots of decisions, some not very wise. I'm truly pissed off that we didn't build nuclear power a la France and thus are so heavily reliant on fossil fuels still, so that the Ukraine war caused a huge issue here. I think you fail to credit covid for the disaster it was for ALL economies. Our government, like most western governments, chose to open the borrowing taps to get through and now we have to pay the costs.
And as for the word 'investment'. IIRC it was a Labour chancellor who turned government spending into 'investment'.
Its not just the Tories fault.
I'm very clear that both parts of the LabCon have failed. But where people today say "this country is broken" and list issues, all of those came to a head under the stewardship of the Tories. They inherited structural issues and made them much much worse.
At least Labour tried to accept they had got things wrong - and Ed Milliband was vilified for doing so. Badenoch? Screeching about prison releases. Erm, Alex Chalk ring any bells Kemi? The "Pray Date"?
Since the pandemic, everything has been crap, but in terms of the public sector, the 2010-19 pre-pandemic Conservatives did much better than 1997-2010 Labour. Public sector productivity under the Conservatives increased by 0.8%/year under the former, having fallen by 0.25% under Labour as Brown lavished "investment" on the public sector, i.e. shovelled money towards his union and contractor friends..
As ever, measuring productivity is challenging, but government is very bad at spending money effectively, but the public sector becomes more efficient (or slightly less inefficient) when you control it tightly.
Yes, but a lot of that efficiency is short termism rather than better management. You can only get short term benefits from maintenence holidays, cutting capital expenditure and driving down wages to levels that perpetuate vacancies. By and large that is what went on rather than real structural change.
She is targeting daughters of soccer moms - girls with parents with a bit of money. Wholesome fun etc.
She realised that the parents would be taking the children to gigs - so made sure that her work appealed to them, to an extent. Same thing as children’s films needing something for the adults who will sit through them as well.
This is a vast, and growing market, around the world. Add in some genuine talent and a carefully crafted pubic image - billions of dollars flow.
Thanks. So it's essentially Kidzbopz for older girls.
Got it.
No. I think Swift is speaking to a set of life experiences different from the average PBer.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
In terms of coalition partners maybe but if 10% of voters went to Yaxley Lennon's party that would leave Reform on 20% not 30% and likely not even winning most seats
Yaxley Lennon has already thrown his hat in with Habibs Advance. If he ever gets round to registering with the EC and running a candidate anywhere we will see what support Tommy brings with him
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
In terms of coalition partners maybe but if 10% of voters went to Yaxley Lennon's party that would leave Reform on 20% not 30% and likely not even winning most seats
That's one of Farage's political challenges. How does he get the benefit of the "even-further-right" (choose your word), without paying a cost?
Do I see some slightly less disastrous economic news this morning? Welcome if so. I can only see what I see but I've noted racecourse attendances have been improving in the summer so there' still some discretionary income out there. Haydock's three day Rose of Lancaster meeting last weekend had its best figures since the pandemic.
As for Wales, with a new electoral system in place, it's very hard to call especially as the last seat projection I saw for the new Senedd had Plaid, Reform and Labour almost level between 27 and 29 seats each leaving the Conservatives, LDs and Greens to the scraps from the table.
Either way, it seems improbable any of the three main parties can find a majority themselves and any majority permutation seems to involve two of them so Plaid-Labour (in some form) looks favourite given, I imagine, no one will want to deal with Reform. I can foresee the latter winning most seats, trying to form a Government, failing and then spending the next four years or so whingeing about it.
The strange thing is, the more you try to break the system, the more the system fights to regain its cohesion. Thats why, contrary to many on here, I could foresee the Conservatives supporting a minority Labour Government rather than a minority Reform administration. Going in with Reform would likely ensure a similar result for the Conservatives in 2034 as the LDs "enjoyed" in 2015.
Going in with Labour would be even more disastrous, most rightwing Tories still voting Tory would go Reform if the Tories supported Starmer, much as most leftwing LDs who voted LD in 2010 went Labour after Clegg supported Cameron.
Voting bill by bill would be more sensible by Kemi or whoever was Tory leader then
She is targeting daughters of soccer moms - girls with parents with a bit of money. Wholesome fun etc.
She realised that the parents would be taking the children to gigs - so made sure that her work appealed to them, to an extent. Same thing as children’s films needing something for the adults who will sit through them as well.
This is a vast, and growing market, around the world. Add in some genuine talent and a carefully crafted pubic image - billions of dollars flow.
Thanks. So it's essentially Kidzbopz for older girls.
Got it.
No. I think Swift is speaking to a set of life experiences different from the average PBer.
Cycling Mikey, discussed over the last day or two btl, making good use of his platform to highlight a very common problem.
Can anyone spot the cycle lane? (Aside: you can't ride on painted lines because they have little grip and are dangerous, sometimes with mini changes of level at the edges). Down my way we have no painted cycle lanes; in the 1990s and 2000s they just shared lots of pavements, including where they are only about 1.1m wide. It's cycle infra designed by a traffic engineer who has not been trained or given a target and no money.
I think calling it a murder strip is a bit OTT. A cyclist can use the road like anyone else. The mistake is by some idiot thinking they can add a cycle lane to a narrow road.
In my experience there is no point arguing with those obsessed with spending money on 'cycling infrastructure' despite our perilous economic situation.
Still, I look forward to the IMF insisting that all such expenditure is slashed for the next few decades as part of a future bailout....
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
Beyond the economic vandalism was the decade in which the referendum itself, and the lengthy aftermath, in which our new relationship with Europe is still not fully settled, provided a massive distraction to government from dealing with anything else.
And the wrecker is still campaigning on "don't let x, y, or z betray Brexit" - as if anyone in the UK owes it any kind of allegiance.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
Don't forget the main thrust of why Britain is broken leads us back to Nigel Farage's big moment in the sun, namely Brexit. All the things he doesn't like such as small boats and darker skinned doctors and nurses came about from collateral damage done by Brexit.
He broke Britain and now he's blaming everyone else.
So you're saying that without Brexit there would have been much lower spending on the NHS and so there would have been 300k fewer NHS workers.
Where did I say that?
Nigel didn't like Portuguese and Polish nurses so he removed freedom of movement. And now, after Boris had to import lots of Nurses from the Indian subcontinent, Nigel says he doesn't like them either.
I wish he'd make his mind up.
Any increase in NHS employment was going to be in large part met by non European workers.
Brexit was irrelevant as Europe is suffering from a shortage of health workers:
“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.
In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.
In Germany, 35,000 care sector posts were vacant last year, 40% more than a decade ago, while a report this summer said that by 2035 more than a third of all health jobs could be unfilled. Facing unprecedented hospital overcrowding due to “a severe shortage of nurses”, even Finland will need 200,000 new workers in the health and social care sector by 2030.
In Spain, the health ministry announced in May that more than 700,000 people were waiting for surgery, and 5,000 frontline GPs and paediatricians in Madrid have been on strike for nearly a month in protest at years of underfunding and overwork.
Efforts to replace retiring workers were already “suboptimal”, the WHO Europe report said, but had to now be urgently extended to “improve retention and tackle an expected increase in younger people leaving the workforce due to burnout, ill health and general dissatisfaction”.
In a third of countries in the region, at least 40% of doctors were aged 55 or over, the report said. Even when younger practitioners stayed despite stress, long hours and often low pay, their reluctance to work in remote rural areas or deprived inner cities had created “medical deserts” that were proving almost impossible to fill.
“All of these threats represent a ticking time bomb … likely to lead to poor health outcomes, long waiting times, many preventable deaths and potentially even health system collapse,” warned Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe.
I guess we are not the target audience. I have listened to some of her songs,, and they are pleasant enough if rather bland.
She is a consumate professional, with strong work ethic and knows her business inside out. Getting and staying at the top of such a competitive field is quite some achievement. Just not my cup of tea.
Suspect "pleasant if rather bland" is part of the point. In a world of a million niches, la Swift has cut through to be broadly liked. That's quite an achievement these days.
If we make a comparison, whose role is Taylor Swift fulfilling in the market compared to 20, 40, 60 years ago. Albeit regionally / globally, not nationally.
If we are looking for OK for parents whilst attractive to kids (I'm not assigning age groups - I get that wrong) - Spice Girls? Destiny's Child? Kylie? Abba?
I think there are parallels between Swift and Minogue, where both have re-invented themselves multiple times and gone from teenage love songs to an older audience. The difference is how much Swift took control of the business side of things so determinedly.
This is why MAGA hates her. She's a poster girl for the traditional American dream, small-town girl who began singing country songs, dating the star (American) football player, and becoming a self-made billionaire. She is the epitome of Republican values... and yet dares to have views on politics and endorses Democrats.
She is targeting daughters of soccer moms - girls with parents with a bit of money. Wholesome fun etc.
She realised that the parents would be taking the children to gigs - so made sure that her work appealed to them, to an extent. Same thing as children’s films needing something for the adults who will sit through them as well.
This is a vast, and growing market, around the world. Add in some genuine talent and a carefully crafted pubic image - billions of dollars flow.
Thanks. So it's essentially Kidzbopz for older girls.
Got it.
I would say there is more depth to her work than that - hence the enduring appeal as her earlier fans get older. Which is why she is in the big money category.
Yes, a lot of her stuff sounds like fairly bland formulaic pop, but there are some good songs too - I quite like "evermore", for example
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
In terms of coalition partners maybe but if 10% of voters went to Yaxley Lennon's party that would leave Reform on 20% not 30% and likely not even winning most seats
That's one of Farage's political challenges. How does he get the benefit of the "even-further-right" (choose your word), without paying a cost?
I doubt if Advance/Robinson would poll above very low single percentages.
Do I see some slightly less disastrous economic news this morning? Welcome if so. I can only see what I see but I've noted racecourse attendances have been improving in the summer so there' still some discretionary income out there. Haydock's three day Rose of Lancaster meeting last weekend had its best figures since the pandemic.
As for Wales, with a new electoral system in place, it's very hard to call especially as the last seat projection I saw for the new Senedd had Plaid, Reform and Labour almost level between 27 and 29 seats each leaving the Conservatives, LDs and Greens to the scraps from the table.
Either way, it seems improbable any of the three main parties can find a majority themselves and any majority permutation seems to involve two of them so Plaid-Labour (in some form) looks favourite given, I imagine, no one will want to deal with Reform. I can foresee the latter winning most seats, trying to form a Government, failing and then spending the next four years or so whingeing about it.
The strange thing is, the more you try to break the system, the more the system fights to regain its cohesion. Thats why, contrary to many on here, I could foresee the Conservatives supporting a minority Labour Government rather than a minority Reform administration. Going in with Reform would likely ensure a similar result for the Conservatives in 2034 as the LDs "enjoyed" in 2015.
Going in with Labour would be even more disastrous, most rightwing Tories still voting Tory would go Reform if the Tories supported Starmer, much as most leftwing LDs who voted LD in 2010 went Labour after Clegg supported Cameron.
Voting bill by bill would be more sensible by Kemi or whoever was Tory leader then
Should the Conservatives offer a minority Reform Government Confidence & Supply in the next Parliament IF the combined numbers produced a working majority (or close to it)?
It's a relevant question if the polls continue to show the Conservative Parliamentary representation reduced by half to two thirds.
My argument is if you become Reform's "junior" partner (and therefore enabler) you will be decimated as the LDs were after the Coalition and even providing C&S to an unpopular Government is still guilt by association.
First Lady Melania Trump has threatened to sue Hunter Biden for more than $1bn after he claimed she was introduced to her husband by sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the first lady, who married US President Donald Trump in 2005, described the claim as "false, disparaging, defamatory and inflammatory".
Biden, son of former US President Joe Biden, made the comments during an interview earlier this month, in which he strongly criticised the president's former ties to Epstein.
Donald Trump was a friend of Epstein, but has said the pair fell out in the early 2000s because the financier had poached employees who worked at the spa in Trump's Florida golf club.
A letter from the first lady's lawyers and addressed to an attorney for Hunter Biden demands he retract the claim and apologise, or face legal action for "over $1bn in damages".
It says the first lady has suffered "overwhelming financial and reputational harm" because of the claim he repeated.
I'm curious as to how she thinks she can get a billion out of Boy Biden.
She doesn't.
It's just the Trump family trying to turn US libel law into what it is already in the UK - a means for the very wealthy to silence any criticism of them.
Trump himself has taken it a bit further, as he's discovered the power of the presidency enables him to extort very large amounts of money from various corporate entities.
Do I see some slightly less disastrous economic news this morning? Welcome if so. I can only see what I see but I've noted racecourse attendances have been improving in the summer so there' still some discretionary income out there. Haydock's three day Rose of Lancaster meeting last weekend had its best figures since the pandemic.
As for Wales, with a new electoral system in place, it's very hard to call especially as the last seat projection I saw for the new Senedd had Plaid, Reform and Labour almost level between 27 and 29 seats each leaving the Conservatives, LDs and Greens to the scraps from the table.
Either way, it seems improbable any of the three main parties can find a majority themselves and any majority permutation seems to involve two of them so Plaid-Labour (in some form) looks favourite given, I imagine, no one will want to deal with Reform. I can foresee the latter winning most seats, trying to form a Government, failing and then spending the next four years or so whingeing about it.
The strange thing is, the more you try to break the system, the more the system fights to regain its cohesion. Thats why, contrary to many on here, I could foresee the Conservatives supporting a minority Labour Government rather than a minority Reform administration. Going in with Reform would likely ensure a similar result for the Conservatives in 2034 as the LDs "enjoyed" in 2015.
Going in with Labour would be even more disastrous, most rightwing Tories still voting Tory would go Reform if the Tories supported Starmer, much as most leftwing LDs who voted LD in 2010 went Labour after Clegg supported Cameron.
Voting bill by bill would be more sensible by Kemi or whoever was Tory leader then
Should the Conservatives offer a minority Reform Government Confidence & Supply in the next Parliament IF the combined numbers produced a working majority (or close to it)?
It's a relevant question if the polls continue to show the Conservative Parliamentary representation reduced by half to two thirds.
My argument is if you become Reform's "junior" partner (and therefore enabler) you will be decimated as the LDs were after the Coalition and even providing C&S to an unpopular Government is still guilt by association.
No, they should vote bill by bill as I said, though ask for Reform C and S if the Tories had more seats than Reform and combined they had a majority
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
In terms of coalition partners maybe but if 10% of voters went to Yaxley Lennon's party that would leave Reform on 20% not 30% and likely not even winning most seats
That's one of Farage's political challenges. How does he get the benefit of the "even-further-right" (choose your word), without paying a cost?
I doubt if Advance/Robinson would poll above very low single percentages.
Which even then could be enough to deny Reform an overall majority
It saddens me, but this site - this pub - is dying. Visitors are in major decline
The deadly PB centrist Dads chased away @williamglenn and he has not returned. And he was an absolutely key, crucial commenter. You stupid fucking fools banned him, simply because you didn't like his rightwing opinions. And now look where we are. He didn't even break any rules - he was banned for "wrongthink"
You are utter fucking imbeciles. You have turned this place into Bluesky. And no one uses Bluesky. Morons
I don’t know if that is the reason, but it does feel like the peak is behind us. In the early to mid 2010s, leading up to the referendum it was brilliant on here, despite me being banned about a hundred times for one thing or another.
Richard Nabavi, Tim, Antifrank, Southam Observer, Charles, Mike Smithson, Plato; these were big characters that have been written out or left and not replaced. Can’t think why really, but it is a shame
The site was at its worse during the 2024 Presidential election, when anything anti-Trump was cheered and anything pro-Trump (i.e. that he might win) was rounded on and shouted down such that some people stopped posting.
That was totally unforgivable. It's the sort of thing that could have led to a splinter site - the "real" politicalbetting.com - as the original one was recognised to have lost its way.
Of course this is where JD Vance has a point, all these anti-Trump PBers getting cancelled by the PB blob, or PB Trumpers taking their bat and ball home does demonstrate free speech is dead.
Isn't what you are describing actually free speech? Anti Trumpers were in the majority, argued their point forcefully and thus took a majority of comment inches. People may have been shouted down but they weren't banned. What you seem to want is a limitation of free speech where a minority view is given protected space. That's a perfectly civilised thing to want but don't get high and mighty about free speech being dead.
I was being mischievous. The mods on here do a magnificent job of drawing the line when financial jeopardy is triggered.
JD Vance and a number of the like-minded on here are outraged when the likes of Lucy Connolly are punished for inciting riots, but more than comfortable when Just Stop Oil are dragged off the Dartford Bridge.
I say a plague on both their houses, but right wingers see Lucy Connolly being banged up for inciting violence as an assault on Freedom of Speech. I believe anyone is free to say whatever they like, but if it breaches societal rules ( not necessarily laws, when the law is an ass) they suffer the consequences.
Apologies I obviously had an irony failure! I agree with everything you said here.
She is targeting daughters of soccer moms - girls with parents with a bit of money. Wholesome fun etc.
She realised that the parents would be taking the children to gigs - so made sure that her work appealed to them, to an extent. Same thing as children’s films needing something for the adults who will sit through them as well.
This is a vast, and growing market, around the world. Add in some genuine talent and a carefully crafted pubic image - billions of dollars flow.
Thanks. So it's essentially Kidzbopz for older girls.
Got it.
I would say there is more depth to her work than that - hence the enduring appeal as her earlier fans get older. Which is why she is in the big money category.
It'll be interesting to see if she joins the ranks of musicians such as Madonna or Kylie (and Bowie...) who can constantly reinvent themselves and their music to appeal to a new generation - and still keep the old fans onside. Or whether she'll just be like Dolly Parton - a excellent musician who found it hard to get widespread musical appeal outside her genre, but became very influential in other ways, as well as becoming a cultural icon.
I cannot name a single Taylor Swift song, despite having heard a few over the years. None has caught me in the same way (say) "Stand by your man" or "Jolene" have. Perhaps that's just me and my ignorant musical tastes...
She already has re-invented herself. Her first album is country. She moved into pop, then albums like Folklore and Evermore were all indie. The Life of a Showgirl, the forthcoming one, is reportedly a move back towards a more pop sound.
Dolly Parton and Taylor Swifts are huge fans of each other, by the way.
WRT growth, there must be a good chance, we’ll hit 2% y o y by the year end. Not stellar, but definitely heading in the right direction.
Amid all the doom and gloom, it’s easy to overlook that economic growth has been our natural condition since about 1800.
But Ruth Gregory, deputy chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said it was doubtful the country "will maintain this pace of growth" between July and September.
"The weak global economy will remain a drag on UK GDP growth for a while yet," she said.
"The full drag on business investment from April's tax rises has yet to be felt. And the ongoing speculation about further tax rises in the Autumn Budget will probably keep consumers in a cautious mood."
“I have taken a break precisely because I got fed up with wading through Leon’s shit; most of the content he spams into this forum nowadays consists either of repetitive bigoted vomit, self-obsessed wank, or gratuitous abuse. There is no analysis or intelligence or insight, at all. Day after day, it just becomes tiresome; PB should be about more than one man’s lifelong attempt to compensate for his under-endowment.
In no way can my absence be interpreted as any support whatsoever for Leon’s thesis that he’s the only racist left in the village.
I saw Leon’s photos of his bits and bobs from across the world; the most valuable souvenir you can get from any travel is a broader perspective, yet it is the one thing that he never manages to bring home.”
That’s all well and good, but on the upside I got you to shut up and leave, so it’s kinda swings and roundabouts?
@julianHjessop Expenditure breakdown of the UK GDP data is not great...
Growth was led by government spending and "gross capital formation: other" (mainly "changes in inventories and acquisitions less disposal of valuables, as well as the expenditure alignment adjustment").
Otherwise, consumer spending and investment were both weak.
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
I hated this day back in 1990 and 1991. (I took A level Maths a year early). Our school had a policy of posting the results out, rather than allowing collection on the Thursday, so I had to wait an extra day to get them, with the media banging on about it all day.
And in other news my top 10 UK university is essentially closed for clearing to home students, and wide open for overseas. Money talks.
The collapse of the idea that the first priority of the top UK universities is the education of properly qualifying UK citizens is an immoral sell out. It will erode us culturally, just as the concept of doctors going on strike erodes the sense of duty and vocation.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
These problems are the same across Europe though, only Italy has broken out of the cycle and who's in charge there, oh right the "fascists" you and the rest of the liberals have been so angry about. The UK hardly stands alone as having these issues and many others.
It's got nothing to do with any other country in Europe. Brexit damaged the economy and made fixing the country's many problems harder. You can have your own, retarded and empirically wrong, views on whether the fleg related gains make the damage worth it but those are the facts.
I guess we are not the target audience. I have listened to some of her songs,, and they are pleasant enough if rather bland.
She is a consumate professional, with strong work ethic and knows her business inside out. Getting and staying at the top of such a competitive field is quite some achievement. Just not my cup of tea.
She has also used her life experiences - boyfriends, social pressures that her target audience either experiences or expect to do so and dealt with them entirely on her own terms.
When her back catalogue was acquired by the pretty disreputable and manipulative mogul Scooter Braun, she fought back by re-recording all her albums and making sure only her new versions would be played or used, becoming something of a heroine to her tens of millions of followers.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
There are enough Farages around the developed world at the moment to conclude he is very much a symptom rather than a cause. Albeit a pretty politically effective one.
All countries have their far right. Indeed I was surprised and amused in Senegal last year to hear they’ve elected a far right MP (that’s how my interlocutors described him) to their parliament, who stands on a platform of opposing immigration from Guinea Conakry on the basis they sponge off the state and cause crime.
It’s all down to that elephant chart of globalisation. The ultra rich have got richer everywhere, the poor and middle classes in developing countries have got much richer with the exception of the very poorest, and the working and lower middle classes in rich countries have relatively poorer. Meanwhile their populations have aged so fewer and fewer working age people find more and more pension entitlements and healthcare.
British exceptionalism means we like to claim either Britain is uniquely broken or the greatest country on earth (or occasionally both) when the truth is we’re all largely in it together.
One thing that I see when internationally travelling is how similar middle-class lifestyles are. I was recently in Zambia, where despite an average income of about $3000 the middle class lifestyles of Lusaka or Livingstone are pretty similar to any developed country, albeit a much smaller percentage of the population and massive rural poverty.
The worldwide division is really one of class rather than of nationality or religion.
Indeed and as I've commented on here many of the young Hindu amd Muslim men round here, while no doubt socially conservative in front of their parents, love fast cars and chasing the girls and all the trappings of a western lifestyle for all they conform to the social norms later in life.
The triumph of capitalism is everywhere - it's the ultimate aspiration but also the ultimate narcotic. Once you have enough, it's never enough and you want more. The lifestyle becomes the goal - a better car, horse riding lessons, the outside jacuzzi, the better holiday etc.
"With the aim of boosting backbench morale..." doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
I thought they had already re-re-re-anounced it?
They announced it without any money being attached - this time there appears to be some money attached...
Now they just need to work out how to sort out a train network because if you are building 1 tunnel you may as well keep them around and build another couple of tunnels at the same time for local trains.
If you finish a tunnel project one week the next tunnel project should be ready to go the following week. Look at how it was done in Norway and the Faroes.
Instead we dither for a couple of years until the contractors get bored and wander off, then wonder why everything now costs 3x as much.
Also look at Copenhagen where a lot of metro has been built over the past 10 years..
That's not really the entire status imo wrt Metros. It's also a failed national politics.
Very little has been built here because we have had 10-15 years of short-termist slash and burn Government, and if funding is not for example finalised until have way through the spending period - then of course it is chaos, chaos imposed from the centre.
Exceptions are where we have longer term political structures with real funding over a period, or Govt involvement. We had that from under Thatcher, Major, Blair, in measure.
And we have a whole series of metro and tram systems in major cities, and London. Just not in the South. Where's the Portsmouth or Southampton Metro, for example? They could have done that whilst Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester were building their light. Why did they not?
But if local and regional government is slashed by a third or so across the board, wtf do you expect to happen?
That's why imo the current version of the Conservative Party needs to die, or to recreate itself as something that's fit to be in our society.
The planning system is not working? Well for years the rhetoric was that such is bad, and it was left to wither on the vine, so of course it is broken. No shit, Sherlock. And they have just had another 15 years and wrecked it all.
Is there a single area of national life that was not flat on its back in July 2024?
When I lived in Stockton on Tees the local Tories were endlessly knocking the town down. The Labour-led council had a clear vision for regeneration, bitterly opposed by the Tories. Redoing the high street? Waste of money! Refurbishing and reopening the only mid-size theatre between Leeds and Newcastle? A white elephant! Building a council owned hotel? Nobody will stay there! Buying and bulldozing empty shops to make a smaller busier high street? Madness!
Every single thing has worked. Stockton Globe is a huge success as is the Hampton by Hilton. Stockton hosts its annual Riverside festival which pulls in performers from around the globe. The shuttered shops have been flattened and a riverside park is going in.
The key word is *investment*. Tories don't understand that the part the broke the most in the UK is that they turned investment into a dirty word. Persuaded people that the state can't invest, can't own, is incompetent. As other states sold us electricity and ran transport and delivered parcels here in the UK. Persuaded business that investment would be a waste of time - why spend money on a foreign-owned UK asset when speculation will see it rise in value anyway? Go look at who owns so many shuttered high street properties. And crippled the public sector and national and local level so that we can't afford teachers and can't afford your operation and can't afford to fill in pot holes or get rid of the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement.
The Tories literally broke this country. Whilst slamming us with record peacetime taxes to boot. Its no wonder that people are laughing at their attempts this week to claim that their mess is actually Labour's mess actually. Then again Labour have fallen into the same "can't afford it" trap and are continuing the misery.
I'm sure you believe the bit in bold, but its not really true in isolation. Lots of governments have made lots of decisions, some not very wise. I'm truly pissed off that we didn't build nuclear power a la France and thus are so heavily reliant on fossil fuels still, so that the Ukraine war caused a huge issue here. I think you fail to credit covid for the disaster it was for ALL economies. Our government, like most western governments, chose to open the borrowing taps to get through and now we have to pay the costs.
And as for the word 'investment'. IIRC it was a Labour chancellor who turned government spending into 'investment'.
Its not just the Tories fault.
The reason that government investment became a dirty word goes deeper. Gordon Brown was just the latest variant.
Some years ago, I was advocating a DARPA for the UK. Politicians I spoke to were enthusiastic but wanted changes - pick the winners and push big money at the them.
Which, of course, breaks the DARPA idea. Which is to disperse relatively small amounts of money in competitions and competitive tenders to try and spark innovation. Yes, the Internet. But also many others. Did you know that the DARPA self driving challenges, many years ago, sparked a generation of engineers, at university, to take a real look at the problem?
The U.K. has a long history of backing the wrong technology at vast expense, because of this.
Post WWII, it looked as if there were two propulsion technologies for submarines that would be the future - nuclear and high test peroxide (HTP). The UK bet all in on HTP.
After the experience of HMS Exploder and HMS Excruciator, it became clear that this was a propulsion system for the clinically insane.
But HTP could be used as a rocket engine oxidiser. Many millions had been invested in plants to make HTP. So British rocket engines were mandated (as far as possible) to use HTP. Which crippled both the military and nasacant civilian rocket projects.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
Amazing thing Brexit as it has somehow infected all the EU with the same problems which it has apparently caused in this country.
Or perhaps Europe's problems are more fundamental and have sod all to do with Brexit and even less to do with Farage.
Lol, the NeverAcceptBrexit crew won't be able to accept this.
The population at large have accepted it happened as it had to. Hilariously, I find it only gets brought up at dinner parties after the 4th bottle comes out, now. Often to tutting and disapproving looks from those who moved on years ago.
I have a hardcore leftwing friend who, I suspect, is deeply uncomfortable with the recent demographic changes in Britain. Like many others. However he simply cannot say this outright as that would make him Tommy Robinson
So he’s gone back to ranting about Brexit and how it’s broken the country. When I ask him how, he says “just look around. Look at London”
When I ask him to be really really specific he changes the subject
It’s fascinating. We see this phenomenon here on Late Stage PB, as well
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
Yeah, I've got 4 students today. 2 x French, 2 x Russian. I've got high expectations for all of them.
Don't forget to only advise them to read at university if they are the offspring of PB Tories. If they are simply social climbing peasants please point them in the direction of an NVQ in plastering.
If all goes to plan its Durham, Brasenose, University of Chicago and SOAS.
@julianHjessop Expenditure breakdown of the UK GDP data is not great...
Growth was led by government spending and "gross capital formation: other" (mainly "changes in inventories and acquisitions less disposal of valuables, as well as the expenditure alignment adjustment").
Otherwise, consumer spending and investment were both weak.
That's ok because we are running a big surplus...oh.....but we have built a load of big useful infrastructure...oh...
Do I see some slightly less disastrous economic news this morning? Welcome if so. I can only see what I see but I've noted racecourse attendances have been improving in the summer so there' still some discretionary income out there. Haydock's three day Rose of Lancaster meeting last weekend had its best figures since the pandemic.
As for Wales, with a new electoral system in place, it's very hard to call especially as the last seat projection I saw for the new Senedd had Plaid, Reform and Labour almost level between 27 and 29 seats each leaving the Conservatives, LDs and Greens to the scraps from the table.
Either way, it seems improbable any of the three main parties can find a majority themselves and any majority permutation seems to involve two of them so Plaid-Labour (in some form) looks favourite given, I imagine, no one will want to deal with Reform. I can foresee the latter winning most seats, trying to form a Government, failing and then spending the next four years or so whingeing about it.
The strange thing is, the more you try to break the system, the more the system fights to regain its cohesion. Thats why, contrary to many on here, I could foresee the Conservatives supporting a minority Labour Government rather than a minority Reform administration. Going in with Reform would likely ensure a similar result for the Conservatives in 2034 as the LDs "enjoyed" in 2015.
Going in with Labour would be even more disastrous, most rightwing Tories still voting Tory would go Reform if the Tories supported Starmer, much as most leftwing LDs who voted LD in 2010 went Labour after Clegg supported Cameron.
Voting bill by bill would be more sensible by Kemi or whoever was Tory leader then
Should the Conservatives offer a minority Reform Government Confidence & Supply in the next Parliament IF the combined numbers produced a working majority (or close to it)?
It's a relevant question if the polls continue to show the Conservative Parliamentary representation reduced by half to two thirds.
My argument is if you become Reform's "junior" partner (and therefore enabler) you will be decimated as the LDs were after the Coalition and even providing C&S to an unpopular Government is still guilt by association.
No, they should vote bill by bill as I said, though ask for Reform C and S if the Tories had more seats than Reform and combined they had a majority
So in effect the Conservatives would be on the opposition benches in the event of a Reform minority Government but would support those pieces of Reform legislation with which they are in agreement so conceivably Conservative MPs could join with other Opposition parties to vote down Reform legislation but would presumably abstain on any vote of confidence.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
For now.....
Yes, Reeves will likely make the situation even worse in the autumn when as predicted she restricts the ability to gift property to avoid IHT and raises CGT
I think the likeliest outcome for the Senedd elections next year is Reform win most seats but Labour stay in power after doing a deal with Plaid as Labour plus Plaid have more AMs than Reform and the Tories, with whichever of Labour or Plaid wins more seats providing the next First Minister.
That could also be an omen for the next GE, while most polls give Reform most seats they are certainly well short of the 35-40%+ Farage would need to be on to make a clear majority likely, especially if LD and Green voters tactically vote Labour in the end in Labour held marginal seats to keep Reform out. It is perfectly possible therefore that at the next GE Reform win a majority in England, or Reform and the Tories combined at least win a majority in England but Labour stay in government as UK wide Labour and the SNP and Plaid combined win more seats in Scotland and Wales than Reform and the Tories combined do and with the LD seats won in England that gives Starmer enough MPs in a hung parliament to back him as PM over Farage
The big question for me is would the Tories support Reform if the two of them have a majority.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
For now.....
Yes, Reeves will likely make the situation even worse in the autumn when as predicted she restricts the ability to gift property to avoid IHT and raises CGT
And guess who is advising the treasury on this....the same person who advised them on the farm tax...to be followed in 3 months by a report by them saying their homework treasury policy on this was all good.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
There are enough Farages around the developed world at the moment to conclude he is very much a symptom rather than a cause. Albeit a pretty politically effective one.
All countries have their far right. Indeed I was surprised and amused in Senegal last year to hear they’ve elected a far right MP (that’s how my interlocutors described him) to their parliament, who stands on a platform of opposing immigration from Guinea Conakry on the basis they sponge off the state and cause crime.
It’s all down to that elephant chart of globalisation. The ultra rich have got richer everywhere, the poor and middle classes in developing countries have got much richer with the exception of the very poorest, and the working and lower middle classes in rich countries have relatively poorer. Meanwhile their populations have aged so fewer and fewer working age people find more and more pension entitlements and healthcare.
British exceptionalism means we like to claim either Britain is uniquely broken or the greatest country on earth (or occasionally both) when the truth is we’re all largely in it together.
One thing that I see when internationally travelling is how similar middle-class lifestyles are. I was recently in Zambia, where despite an average income of about $3000 the middle class lifestyles of Lusaka or Livingstone are pretty similar to any developed country, albeit a much smaller percentage of the population and massive rural poverty.
The worldwide division is really one of class rather than of nationality or religion.
Indeed and as I've commented on here many of the young Hindu amd Muslim men round here, while no doubt socially conservative in front of their parents, love fast cars and chasing the girls and all the trappings of a western lifestyle for all they conform to the social norms later in life.
The triumph of capitalism is everywhere - it's the ultimate aspiration but also the ultimate narcotic. Once you have enough, it's never enough and you want more. The lifestyle becomes the goal - a better car, horse riding lessons, the outside jacuzzi, the better holiday etc.
Hindus more, Muslims still largely vote Labour or back Corbynite Independents and the new Corbyn party and tend to be even more socially conservative and less materialistic on average than their Hindu counterparts. Hindus by contrast are now increasingly voting Tory and were one of the few groups the Tories made net gains with at the last GE, helped by Rishi of course being leader
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
Not true on either.
1. You only need to survive 3 years to avoid IHT totally - it's graduated after that. And any competent family would have sewn this up years ago if the second generation is working in the farm (well, they're actively involved in the business, so ...) 2. Those blokes with muddy wellington boots called "farmers" don't agree.
Do I see some slightly less disastrous economic news this morning? Welcome if so. I can only see what I see but I've noted racecourse attendances have been improving in the summer so there' still some discretionary income out there. Haydock's three day Rose of Lancaster meeting last weekend had its best figures since the pandemic.
As for Wales, with a new electoral system in place, it's very hard to call especially as the last seat projection I saw for the new Senedd had Plaid, Reform and Labour almost level between 27 and 29 seats each leaving the Conservatives, LDs and Greens to the scraps from the table.
Either way, it seems improbable any of the three main parties can find a majority themselves and any majority permutation seems to involve two of them so Plaid-Labour (in some form) looks favourite given, I imagine, no one will want to deal with Reform. I can foresee the latter winning most seats, trying to form a Government, failing and then spending the next four years or so whingeing about it.
The strange thing is, the more you try to break the system, the more the system fights to regain its cohesion. Thats why, contrary to many on here, I could foresee the Conservatives supporting a minority Labour Government rather than a minority Reform administration. Going in with Reform would likely ensure a similar result for the Conservatives in 2034 as the LDs "enjoyed" in 2015.
Going in with Labour would be even more disastrous, most rightwing Tories still voting Tory would go Reform if the Tories supported Starmer, much as most leftwing LDs who voted LD in 2010 went Labour after Clegg supported Cameron.
Voting bill by bill would be more sensible by Kemi or whoever was Tory leader then
Should the Conservatives offer a minority Reform Government Confidence & Supply in the next Parliament IF the combined numbers produced a working majority (or close to it)?
It's a relevant question if the polls continue to show the Conservative Parliamentary representation reduced by half to two thirds.
My argument is if you become Reform's "junior" partner (and therefore enabler) you will be decimated as the LDs were after the Coalition and even providing C&S to an unpopular Government is still guilt by association.
No, they should vote bill by bill as I said, though ask for Reform C and S if the Tories had more seats than Reform and combined they had a majority
So in effect the Conservatives would be on the opposition benches in the event of a Reform minority Government but would support those pieces of Reform legislation with which they are in agreement so conceivably Conservative MPs could join with other Opposition parties to vote down Reform legislation but would presumably abstain on any vote of confidence.
I think the likeliest outcome for the Senedd elections next year is Reform win most seats but Labour stay in power after doing a deal with Plaid as Labour plus Plaid have more AMs than Reform and the Tories, with whichever of Labour or Plaid wins more seats providing the next First Minister.
That could also be an omen for the next GE, while most polls give Reform most seats they are certainly well short of the 35-40%+ Farage would need to be on to make a clear majority likely, especially if LD and Green voters tactically vote Labour in the end in Labour held marginal seats to keep Reform out. It is perfectly possible therefore that at the next GE Reform win a majority in England, or Reform and the Tories combined at least win a majority in England but Labour stay in government as UK wide Labour and the SNP and Plaid combined win more seats in Scotland and Wales than Reform and the Tories combined do and with the LD seats won in England that gives Starmer enough MPs in a hung parliament to back him as PM over Farage
The big question for me is would the Tories support Reform if the two of them have a majority.
Only if the Tories had more seats than Reform or we had PR
"With the aim of boosting backbench morale..." doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
I thought they had already re-re-re-anounced it?
They announced it without any money being attached - this time there appears to be some money attached...
Now they just need to work out how to sort out a train network because if you are building 1 tunnel you may as well keep them around and build another couple of tunnels at the same time for local trains.
If you finish a tunnel project one week the next tunnel project should be ready to go the following week. Look at how it was done in Norway and the Faroes.
Instead we dither for a couple of years until the contractors get bored and wander off, then wonder why everything now costs 3x as much.
Also look at Copenhagen where a lot of metro has been built over the past 10 years..
That's not really the entire status imo wrt Metros. It's also a failed national politics.
Very little has been built here because we have had 10-15 years of short-termist slash and burn Government, and if funding is not for example finalised until have way through the spending period - then of course it is chaos, chaos imposed from the centre.
Exceptions are where we have longer term political structures with real funding over a period, or Govt involvement. We had that from under Thatcher, Major, Blair, in measure.
And we have a whole series of metro and tram systems in major cities, and London. Just not in the South. Where's the Portsmouth or Southampton Metro, for example? They could have done that whilst Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester were building their light. Why did they not?
But if local and regional government is slashed by a third or so across the board, wtf do you expect to happen?
That's why imo the current version of the Conservative Party needs to die, or to recreate itself as something that's fit to be in our society.
The planning system is not working? Well for years the rhetoric was that such is bad, and it was left to wither on the vine, so of course it is broken. No shit, Sherlock. And they have just had another 15 years and wrecked it all.
Is there a single area of national life that was not flat on its back in July 2024?
When I lived in Stockton on Tees the local Tories were endlessly knocking the town down. The Labour-led council had a clear vision for regeneration, bitterly opposed by the Tories. Redoing the high street? Waste of money! Refurbishing and reopening the only mid-size theatre between Leeds and Newcastle? A white elephant! Building a council owned hotel? Nobody will stay there! Buying and bulldozing empty shops to make a smaller busier high street? Madness!
Every single thing has worked. Stockton Globe is a huge success as is the Hampton by Hilton. Stockton hosts its annual Riverside festival which pulls in performers from around the globe. The shuttered shops have been flattened and a riverside park is going in.
The key word is *investment*. Tories don't understand that the part the broke the most in the UK is that they turned investment into a dirty word. Persuaded people that the state can't invest, can't own, is incompetent. As other states sold us electricity and ran transport and delivered parcels here in the UK. Persuaded business that investment would be a waste of time - why spend money on a foreign-owned UK asset when speculation will see it rise in value anyway? Go look at who owns so many shuttered high street properties. And crippled the public sector and national and local level so that we can't afford teachers and can't afford your operation and can't afford to fill in pot holes or get rid of the weeds growing through the cracks in the pavement.
The Tories literally broke this country. Whilst slamming us with record peacetime taxes to boot. Its no wonder that people are laughing at their attempts this week to claim that their mess is actually Labour's mess actually. Then again Labour have fallen into the same "can't afford it" trap and are continuing the misery.
I'm sure you believe the bit in bold, but its not really true in isolation. Lots of governments have made lots of decisions, some not very wise. I'm truly pissed off that we didn't build nuclear power a la France and thus are so heavily reliant on fossil fuels still, so that the Ukraine war caused a huge issue here. I think you fail to credit covid for the disaster it was for ALL economies. Our government, like most western governments, chose to open the borrowing taps to get through and now we have to pay the costs.
And as for the word 'investment'. IIRC it was a Labour chancellor who turned government spending into 'investment'.
Its not just the Tories fault.
The reason that government investment became a dirty word goes deeper. Gordon Brown was just the latest variant.
Some years ago, I was advocating a DARPA for the UK. Politicians I spoke to were enthusiastic but wanted changes - pick the winners and push big money at the them.
Which, of course, breaks the DARPA idea. Which is to disperse relatively small amounts of money in competitions and competitive tenders to try and spark innovation. Yes, the Internet. But also many others. Did you know that the DARPA self driving challenges, many years ago, sparked a generation of engineers, at university, to take a real look at the problem?
The U.K. has a long history of backing the wrong technology at vast expense, because of this.
Post WWII, it looked as if there were two propulsion technologies for submarines that would be the future - nuclear and high test peroxide (HTP). The UK bet all in on HTP.
After the experience of HMS Exploder and HMS Excruciator, it became clear that this was a propulsion system for the clinically insane.
But HTP could be used as a rocket engine oxidiser. Many millions had been invested in plants to make HTP. So British rocket engines were mandated (as far as possible) to use HTP. Which crippled both the military and nasacant civilian rocket projects.
Just been reading Rendell's history of the V-bomber force. The HTP in Blue Steel was an acute pain in the backside in operation, e.g. when landing at a strange airfield. They had to carry their own noddy suits and masks and deal with any leaks etc.
On the positive side, all you needed to deal with it was lots of hydrogen monoxide ...
One thing I didn't know, when you provide your ID, a number of big websites have outsourced this to Persona, a US based company who doesn't have to follow GDPR with your data....smashing.
The OSA should have set up a government age-verification service (especially as Whitehall is so keen on electric ID cards).
I think the likeliest outcome for the Senedd elections next year is Reform win most seats but Labour stay in power after doing a deal with Plaid as Labour plus Plaid have more AMs than Reform and the Tories, with whichever of Labour or Plaid wins more seats providing the next First Minister.
That could also be an omen for the next GE, while most polls give Reform most seats they are certainly well short of the 35-40%+ Farage would need to be on to make a clear majority likely, especially if LD and Green voters tactically vote Labour in the end in Labour held marginal seats to keep Reform out. It is perfectly possible therefore that at the next GE Reform win a majority in England, or Reform and the Tories combined at least win a majority in England but Labour stay in government as UK wide Labour and the SNP and Plaid combined win more seats in Scotland and Wales than Reform and the Tories combined do and with the LD seats won in England that gives Starmer enough MPs in a hung parliament to back him as PM over Farage
The big question for me is would the Tories support Reform if the two of them have a majority.
One one hand, blooming tempting. And if the alternative is a Lab-Plaid arrangement, they will look a bit silly stepping aside and letting the lefties and weirdoes sweep in.
On the other, if the Conservatives become Reform's minions, it will likely hasten their death as a party elsewhere.
I think the moral here is that holding the balance of power is a lot less fun than it's cracked up to be.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
Hold on a second, Isn't the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, is the guy / group who wrote the advice that the UK government used to form this policy in the first place i.e. this isn't an independent analysis. That is them marking their own homework.
They have presented the data. Is there a flaw in their numbers?
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
Not true on either.
1. You only need to survive 3 years to avoid IHT totally - it's graduated after that. And any competent family would have sewn this up years ago if the second generation is working in the farm (well, they're actively involved in the business, so ...) 2. Those blokes with muddy wellington boots called "farmers" don't agree.
On topic, I doubt Labour will win, but there may be a smidgen of value in 5/1.
Does tactical voting really work in an electoral system like this though?
It could work in the constituency part.
I might be mistaken, but I was under the impression that the whole voting structure was changing for the next election, and they are binning the 'constituency' vs 'top-up' differential. Instead it will be Proportional Representation, with Closed Party Lists, in 16 separate constituency's (created by pairing 2 Westminster constituency's together), with 6 people elected from each constituency and no balancing out. Firstly this means that there are 96 seats not the current 60 - and secondly it means that tactical voting really isn't (or shouldn't be) a thing.
Yes, but also no. Yes, the constituency seats are gone and the next election with just be a straightforward list system. This makes tactical voting largely unnecessary.
But it is perhaps an issue for the smaller parties where the question is whether they'll manage any seats in an area or not. They are using 16-seat areas, so you need about 6% to guarantee winning a seat. That's about where the Greens and LibDems are polling, with some smaller Welsh parties below that. There's an argument you should vote tactically. If you are a LibDem supporter in Afan Ogwr Rhondda, would you do better to vote Labour or Plaid? What if you support Propel or Gwlad?
Also, even in countries with PR where tactical voting is largely unnecessary, it's quite common to see voters coagulating around two main parties. Coming first in an election carries a lot of moral authority and there can be a desire to see one's side be first.
Oh, bother. Got the maths wrong. Ignore the numbers there! They are 6-seat areas, 16 of them, so the effective threshold is about 14%.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
Hold on a second, Isn't the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, is the guy / group who wrote the advice that the UK government used to form this policy in the first place i.e. this isn't an independent analysis. That is them marking their own homework.
They have presented the data. Is there a flaw in their numbers?
You are in academia...as I have been...when you write a paper you must declare conflicts of interest / other people who have been involved in its creation, because you don't get to mark your own homework or have people who have been closely involved in the process of peer review. For very good reasons.
The guy behind this a) was involved in the Farm Tax policy and b) has a long held and well known political bent to wanting massively increase things like IHT to claw a lot more back from people in the name of fairness.
“I have taken a break precisely because I got fed up with wading through Leon’s shit; most of the content he spams into this forum nowadays consists either of repetitive bigoted vomit, self-obsessed wank, or gratuitous abuse. There is no analysis or intelligence or insight, at all. Day after day, it just becomes tiresome; PB should be about more than one man’s lifelong attempt to compensate for his under-endowment.
In no way can my absence be interpreted as any support whatsoever for Leon’s thesis that he’s the only racist left in the village.
I saw Leon’s photos of his bits and bobs from across the world; the most valuable souvenir you can get from any travel is a broader perspective, yet it is the one thing that he never manages to bring home.”
That’s all well and good, but on the upside I got you to shut up and leave, so it’s kinda swings and roundabouts?
FPT from Dura - "see you tomorrow".
I never flounced! I just said PB is in decline, which it is
On reflection I think it might be inevitable. The site was founded in the noughties, we’ve been here twenty years and we’ve all gotten a lot older (me included). Some of us have literally died. So the decay in commentary value is baked in: we simply don’t attract enough newcomers to compensate for the Agues of Time
However I stand by my other point. This slide is not helped by a groupthink Centrist Dork hostility to right wing ideas - especially when the populist right is in the ascendant. It’s the equivalent of a British football website refusing to discuss northern clubs run by wealthy foreigners
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
Not true on either.
1. You only need to survive 3 years to avoid IHT totally - it's graduated after that. And any competent family would have sewn this up years ago if the second generation is working in the farm (well, they're actively involved in the business, so ...) 2. Those blokes with muddy wellington boots called "farmers" don't agree.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
Don't forget the main thrust of why Britain is broken leads us back to Nigel Farage's big moment in the sun, namely Brexit. All the things he doesn't like such as small boats and darker skinned doctors and nurses came about from collateral damage done by Brexit.
He broke Britain and now he's blaming everyone else.
So you're saying that without Brexit there would have been much lower spending on the NHS and so there would have been 300k fewer NHS workers.
Where did I say that?
Nigel didn't like Portuguese and Polish nurses so he removed freedom of movement. And now, after Boris had to import lots of Nurses from the Indian subcontinent, Nigel says he doesn't like them either.
I wish he'd make his mind up.
Any increase in NHS employment was going to be in large part met by non European workers.
Brexit was irrelevant as Europe is suffering from a shortage of health workers:
“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.
In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.
In Germany, 35,000 care sector posts were vacant last year, 40% more than a decade ago, while a report this summer said that by 2035 more than a third of all health jobs could be unfilled. Facing unprecedented hospital overcrowding due to “a severe shortage of nurses”, even Finland will need 200,000 new workers in the health and social care sector by 2030.
In Spain, the health ministry announced in May that more than 700,000 people were waiting for surgery, and 5,000 frontline GPs and paediatricians in Madrid have been on strike for nearly a month in protest at years of underfunding and overwork.
Efforts to replace retiring workers were already “suboptimal”, the WHO Europe report said, but had to now be urgently extended to “improve retention and tackle an expected increase in younger people leaving the workforce due to burnout, ill health and general dissatisfaction”.
In a third of countries in the region, at least 40% of doctors were aged 55 or over, the report said. Even when younger practitioners stayed despite stress, long hours and often low pay, their reluctance to work in remote rural areas or deprived inner cities had created “medical deserts” that were proving almost impossible to fill.
“All of these threats represent a ticking time bomb … likely to lead to poor health outcomes, long waiting times, many preventable deaths and potentially even health system collapse,” warned Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe.
Which is why, pre-Brexit, so many European doctors (including my German sister-in-law) were incentivised to spend a chunk of their career working in the UK. Brexit has made this more difficult for them, so now they are less likely to bother, which means that we have had to import doctors from further afield, and they are more likely to have dependents in tow.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
Don't forget the main thrust of why Britain is broken leads us back to Nigel Farage's big moment in the sun, namely Brexit. All the things he doesn't like such as small boats and darker skinned doctors and nurses came about from collateral damage done by Brexit.
He broke Britain and now he's blaming everyone else.
So you're saying that without Brexit there would have been much lower spending on the NHS and so there would have been 300k fewer NHS workers.
Where did I say that?
Nigel didn't like Portuguese and Polish nurses so he removed freedom of movement. And now, after Boris had to import lots of Nurses from the Indian subcontinent, Nigel says he doesn't like them either.
I wish he'd make his mind up.
Any increase in NHS employment was going to be in large part met by non European workers.
Brexit was irrelevant as Europe is suffering from a shortage of health workers:
“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.
In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.
In Germany, 35,000 care sector posts were vacant last year, 40% more than a decade ago, while a report this summer said that by 2035 more than a third of all health jobs could be unfilled. Facing unprecedented hospital overcrowding due to “a severe shortage of nurses”, even Finland will need 200,000 new workers in the health and social care sector by 2030.
In Spain, the health ministry announced in May that more than 700,000 people were waiting for surgery, and 5,000 frontline GPs and paediatricians in Madrid have been on strike for nearly a month in protest at years of underfunding and overwork.
Efforts to replace retiring workers were already “suboptimal”, the WHO Europe report said, but had to now be urgently extended to “improve retention and tackle an expected increase in younger people leaving the workforce due to burnout, ill health and general dissatisfaction”.
In a third of countries in the region, at least 40% of doctors were aged 55 or over, the report said. Even when younger practitioners stayed despite stress, long hours and often low pay, their reluctance to work in remote rural areas or deprived inner cities had created “medical deserts” that were proving almost impossible to fill.
“All of these threats represent a ticking time bomb … likely to lead to poor health outcomes, long waiting times, many preventable deaths and potentially even health system collapse,” warned Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe.
Which is why, pre-Brexit, so many European doctors (including my German sister-in-law) were incentivised to spend a chunk of their career working in the UK. Brexit has made this more difficult for them, so now they are less likely to bother, which means that we have had to import doctors from further afield, and they are more likely to have dependents in tow.
Except they can't now bring dependents with them thanks to Rishi tightening the rules
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
These problems are the same across Europe though, only Italy has broken out of the cycle and who's in charge there, oh right the "fascists" you and the rest of the liberals have been so angry about. The UK hardly stands alone as having these issues and many others.
It's got nothing to do with any other country in Europe. Brexit damaged the economy and made fixing the country's many problems harder. You can have your own, retarded and empirically wrong, views on whether the fleg related gains make the damage worth it but those are the facts.
Also, the brexitwave...
Hahaha
I actually thought of you when I wrote THIS:
“I have a hardcore leftwing friend who, I suspect, is deeply uncomfortable with the recent demographic changes in Britain. Like many others. However he simply cannot say this outright as that would make him Tommy Robinson
So he’s gone back to ranting about Brexit and how it’s broken the country. When I ask him how, he says “just look around. Look at London”
When I ask him to be really really specific he changes the subject
It’s fascinating. We see this phenomenon here on Late Stage PB, as well”
Cycling Mikey, discussed over the last day or two btl, making good use of his platform to highlight a very common problem.
Can anyone spot the cycle lane? (Aside: you can't ride on painted lines because they have little grip and are dangerous, sometimes with mini changes of level at the edges). Down my way we have no painted cycle lanes; in the 1990s and 2000s they just shared lots of pavements, including where they are only about 1.1m wide. It's cycle infra designed by a traffic engineer who has not been trained or given a target and no money.
I think calling it a murder strip is a bit OTT. A cyclist can use the road like anyone else. The mistake is by some idiot thinking they can add a cycle lane to a narrow road.
In my experience there is no point arguing with those obsessed with spending money on 'cycling infrastructure' despite our perilous economic situation.
Still, I look forward to the IMF insisting that all such expenditure is slashed for the next few decades as part of a future bailout....
That doesn't work unfortunately; it's not much more rounding error. Active travel expenditure ie walking/wheeling and cycling in England runs about about £10 per person per annum.
For a number, even in the most generous area of the country the amount spent on "cycling" by Transport for London is roughly £1.2 billion over the 20 years 2002 to 2022 - and most would agree that that has been quite transformative so far. Albeit the current plan runs through until 2040. And it also covers much of walking / wheeling. That is about £60 million per annum. Amounts have gradually increased (75% of that is the second decade), so even now it is only maybe £25-30 per head per annum in London.
That is 5x per annum less than the £300 million that has just been spent on a single M25 junction at Wisley.
For RefUK this would be another "we will save all this money wasted on DEI by all these Councils", then when they get in the amount is pretty much zero. Of course it was clear from the budgets and annual reports, but they do marketing, not policy. Then they will be scrabbling around cutting services that are already only skeletons to meet their stupid promises - see (unfortunately) Notts and Derbys.
Middle-of-the-road pop, appealing to a wide range of mostly female audience from teenagers to 40s, puts in a lot of effort with audience engagement. Does most of her own songwriting too.
Huge effort into stadium tour last year, hundreds of people involved and it grossed a billion dollars. Shows are sexy but not slutty, can go with the family.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
There are enough Farages around the developed world at the moment to conclude he is very much a symptom rather than a cause. Albeit a pretty politically effective one.
All countries have their far right. Indeed I was surprised and amused in Senegal last year to hear they’ve elected a far right MP (that’s how my interlocutors described him) to their parliament, who stands on a platform of opposing immigration from Guinea Conakry on the basis they sponge off the state and cause crime.
It’s all down to that elephant chart of globalisation. The ultra rich have got richer everywhere, the poor and middle classes in developing countries have got much richer with the exception of the very poorest, and the working and lower middle classes in rich countries have relatively poorer. Meanwhile their populations have aged so fewer and fewer working age people find more and more pension entitlements and healthcare.
British exceptionalism means we like to claim either Britain is uniquely broken or the greatest country on earth (or occasionally both) when the truth is we’re all largely in it together.
Yes exactly. And (eg) Brexit was in large degree an expression of that exceptionalism. Our sovereignty is simultaneously purer and more fragile than that of your common-or-garden European country. It was sullied by EU membership. Only alone and untethered can we be truly ourselves, realise our potential, achieve our destiny.
Most UK agricultural estates can shoulder the cost of higher death duties without being forced to sell the family farm, according to analysis of Labour reforms that campaigners fear will hammer rural communities.
Eight in 10 farm estates affected by changes to the inheritance tax regime set out in the autumn Budget would be able to pay their entire IHT bill out of non-farm assets, according to a study by the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, which produces independent academic research on tax policy.
[...] the NFU welcomed the findings of the report, saying it presented an opportunity for the government to rework the reforms.
“There are interesting adjustments within the report, that appear to mitigate the impacts on the most vulnerable in our community and enable farms to invest in the future of food production with greater confidence,” said NFU president Tom Bradshaw.
So 20% of family farms would not be able to pay the wicked family farm tax out of non farm assets, showing the devastation it has caused. However the Starmer Labour supporting FT wants to spin it
Hmm. You are,. presumably carefully (it's such an obvious thing), assuming that no mitigation measures are being taken by that 20%. For instance, life insurance, or lifetime gifts, and so on. Which are easily done, and have been standard practice for decades. As indeed they were for family inheritance planning in terms of domestic houses before the Tories started pampering well-off elderly voters in the SE.
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
You have to survive 7 years after a lifetime gift for it to avoid IHT.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
Not true on either.
1. You only need to survive 3 years to avoid IHT totally - it's graduated after that. And any competent family would have sewn this up years ago if the second generation is working in the farm (well, they're actively involved in the business, so ...) 2. Those blokes with muddy wellington boots called "farmers" don't agree.
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
Don't forget the main thrust of why Britain is broken leads us back to Nigel Farage's big moment in the sun, namely Brexit. All the things he doesn't like such as small boats and darker skinned doctors and nurses came about from collateral damage done by Brexit.
He broke Britain and now he's blaming everyone else.
So you're saying that without Brexit there would have been much lower spending on the NHS and so there would have been 300k fewer NHS workers.
Where did I say that?
Nigel didn't like Portuguese and Polish nurses so he removed freedom of movement. And now, after Boris had to import lots of Nurses from the Indian subcontinent, Nigel says he doesn't like them either.
I wish he'd make his mind up.
Any increase in NHS employment was going to be in large part met by non European workers.
Brexit was irrelevant as Europe is suffering from a shortage of health workers:
“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.
In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.
In Germany, 35,000 care sector posts were vacant last year, 40% more than a decade ago, while a report this summer said that by 2035 more than a third of all health jobs could be unfilled. Facing unprecedented hospital overcrowding due to “a severe shortage of nurses”, even Finland will need 200,000 new workers in the health and social care sector by 2030.
In Spain, the health ministry announced in May that more than 700,000 people were waiting for surgery, and 5,000 frontline GPs and paediatricians in Madrid have been on strike for nearly a month in protest at years of underfunding and overwork.
Efforts to replace retiring workers were already “suboptimal”, the WHO Europe report said, but had to now be urgently extended to “improve retention and tackle an expected increase in younger people leaving the workforce due to burnout, ill health and general dissatisfaction”.
In a third of countries in the region, at least 40% of doctors were aged 55 or over, the report said. Even when younger practitioners stayed despite stress, long hours and often low pay, their reluctance to work in remote rural areas or deprived inner cities had created “medical deserts” that were proving almost impossible to fill.
“All of these threats represent a ticking time bomb … likely to lead to poor health outcomes, long waiting times, many preventable deaths and potentially even health system collapse,” warned Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe.
Which is why, pre-Brexit, so many European doctors (including my German sister-in-law) were incentivised to spend a chunk of their career working in the UK. Brexit has made this more difficult for them, so now they are less likely to bother, which means that we have had to import doctors from further afield, and they are more likely to have dependents in tow.
Except they can't now bring dependents with them thanks to Rishi tightening the rules
Which of course means that fewer will come, thus further exacerbating the shortage of doctors in the UK.
“I have taken a break precisely because I got fed up with wading through Leon’s shit; most of the content he spams into this forum nowadays consists either of repetitive bigoted vomit, self-obsessed wank, or gratuitous abuse. There is no analysis or intelligence or insight, at all. Day after day, it just becomes tiresome; PB should be about more than one man’s lifelong attempt to compensate for his under-endowment.
In no way can my absence be interpreted as any support whatsoever for Leon’s thesis that he’s the only racist left in the village.
I saw Leon’s photos of his bits and bobs from across the world; the most valuable souvenir you can get from any travel is a broader perspective, yet it is the one thing that he never manages to bring home.”
That’s all well and good, but on the upside I got you to shut up and leave, so it’s kinda swings and roundabouts?
FPT from Dura - "see you tomorrow".
I never flounced! I just said PB is in decline, which it is
On reflection I think it might be inevitable. The site was founded in the noughties, we’ve been here twenty years and we’ve all gotten a lot older (me included). Some of us have literally died. So the decay in commentary value is baked in: we simply don’t attract enough newcomers to compensate for the Agues of Time
However I stand by my other point. This slide is not helped by a groupthink Centrist Dork hostility to right wing ideas - especially when the populist right is in the ascendant. It’s the equivalent of a British football website refusing to discuss northern clubs run by wealthy foreigners
When this site was founded the Tories were still the main right of centre party and certainly once Cameron took over still the most popular party with the upper middle class who are found disproportionally on here.
Now Reform are the main right of centre party and most popular with the white working class, who aren't found in significant numbers on PB while many of the upper middle class think Farage is a populist oik
I think the likeliest outcome for the Senedd elections next year is Reform win most seats but Labour stay in power after doing a deal with Plaid as Labour plus Plaid have more AMs than Reform and the Tories, with whichever of Labour or Plaid wins more seats providing the next First Minister.
That could also be an omen for the next GE, while most polls give Reform most seats they are certainly well short of the 35-40%+ Farage would need to be on to make a clear majority likely, especially if LD and Green voters tactically vote Labour in the end in Labour held marginal seats to keep Reform out. It is perfectly possible therefore that at the next GE Reform win a majority in England, or Reform and the Tories combined at least win a majority in England but Labour stay in government as UK wide Labour and the SNP and Plaid combined win more seats in Scotland and Wales than Reform and the Tories combined do and with the LD seats won in England that gives Starmer enough MPs in a hung parliament to back him as PM over Farage
Good morning
I don't agree with you about Labour staying in power in Wales next year
All the signs are labour are heading for a tanking and the likely winner will be Plaid with Reform a close second
You do not live in Wales so haven't experienced the disaster that is Welsh Labour and it would be toxic for Plaid to allow labour to continue in government
That doesn't mean that Wales will have a stable Senedd, but I do expect 'an anybody but labour attitude' post the election next spring
@stodge makes a great point about Reform and the likelihood of nobody wanting to work with them. I like Reform in that they are asking the right questions - why are things broken?
The problem is that they have decided that there are two evils - foreigners and windfarms. Its hard to find mainstream politicians wanting to work with people allied to "send the brown people home before they rape my daughter" brigade. Which is a pity.
If Reform could detach the racist far right and see them off into a Yaxley-Lennon party they would do much better.
IMV Reform don't seem to be asking "why are things broken?"
Instead, they have decided the causes: as you say, things like foreigners and windfarms, and are constructing a narrative that the 'broken' is caused by those two things. In other words, as is sadly common in politics, their narrative is based around ideology, not reality.
When in reality, much that is 'broken' might be down to people like them. Or even, in the case of people like Farage, them directly.
The new Guilty Men.
Its incredible how someone who has never been in government and wasn't even an MP until a year ago is now blamed for so much by so many.
How about we instead start with those people who have been in government and made the decisions.
We can also add more generally, to individually varying extents, the British people.
Hang on. We were told Farage was a political genius who had massive effects on the country's politics despite not being an MP. The man who sold us the gilded land of Brexit. Now he was an utter irrelevance because he was not an MP?
Was Farage responsible for tripling student tuition fees ? Was Farage responsible for triple lock pensions ? Was Farage responsible for unaffordable housing ? Was Farage responsible for the banks crashing ? Was Farage responsible for nimbyism ? Was Farage responsible for every infrastructure spending fiasco ? Was Farage responsible for defence cuts ? Was Farage responsible for social care not being reformed ? Was Farage responsible for lack of productivity growth ? Was Farage responsible for on line shopping destroying high streets ? Was Farage responsible for high energy costs ? Was Farage responsible for people wanting more welfarism for themselves ? Was Farage responsible for ageing demographics ? Was Farage responsible for the effects of AI on young graduates ?
I don't want Farage anywhere near government as he would likely be disastrous but I'm not going to blame him for things which are varyingly caused by those who have been in government, the general behaviour of the British people, world events and underlying structural factors.
He certainly made all of the above harder to remediate or ameliorate due to the economic vandalism of brexit.
Amazing thing Brexit as it has somehow infected all the EU with the same problems which it has apparently caused in this country.
Or perhaps Europe's problems are more fundamental and have sod all to do with Brexit and even less to do with Farage.
Lol, the NeverAcceptBrexit crew won't be able to accept this.
The population at large have accepted it happened as it had to. Hilariously, I find it only gets brought up at dinner parties after the 4th bottle comes out, now. Often to tutting and disapproving looks from those who moved on years ago.
What does "accepting Brexit" look like?
Eg what did "accepting EU membership" look like for you all those years?
I guess we are not the target audience. I have listened to some of her songs,, and they are pleasant enough if rather bland.
She is a consumate professional, with strong work ethic and knows her business inside out. Getting and staying at the top of such a competitive field is quite some achievement. Just not my cup of tea.
She has also used her life experiences - boyfriends, social pressures that her target audience either experiences or expect to do so and dealt with them entirely on her own terms.
When her back catalogue was acquired by the pretty disreputable and manipulative mogul Scooter Braun, she fought back by re-recording all her albums and making sure only her new versions would be played or used, becoming something of a heroine to her tens of millions of followers.
Taylor Swift also (if iirc TRiE correctly and it's too hot to check) owns all her own touring services and infra so keeps a healthy chunk of the ticket price.
“I have taken a break precisely because I got fed up with wading through Leon’s shit; most of the content he spams into this forum nowadays consists either of repetitive bigoted vomit, self-obsessed wank, or gratuitous abuse. There is no analysis or intelligence or insight, at all. Day after day, it just becomes tiresome; PB should be about more than one man’s lifelong attempt to compensate for his under-endowment.
In no way can my absence be interpreted as any support whatsoever for Leon’s thesis that he’s the only racist left in the village.
I saw Leon’s photos of his bits and bobs from across the world; the most valuable souvenir you can get from any travel is a broader perspective, yet it is the one thing that he never manages to bring home.”
That’s all well and good, but on the upside I got you to shut up and leave, so it’s kinda swings and roundabouts?
That you think that's any kind of appropriate response to my post (which has six likes already) simply illustrates the problem that you resolutely fail to recognise.
I posted this morning because you had the cheek to try and use my ten or eleven day absence in support of your own point, when it's your behaviour that drove me away in the first place, as it has others before.
That you got so quickly from bemoaning regulars' leaving to congratulating yourself on having driven yet another one away is tragic fail of both self awareness and argumentation.
Middle-of-the-road pop, appealing to a wide range of mostly female audience from teenagers to 40s, puts in a lot of effort with audience engagement.
Huge effort into stadium tour last year, hundreds of people involved and it grossed a billion dollars. Shows are sexy but not slutty.
Not for me, but can understand the success.
Also (especially in her early years), she writes really good, catchy, tuneful country-rock songs. She plays them and sings them herself, with skill. She’s also notably attractive
It’s not really a mystery why she’s successful. The reason she is massively weirdly successful is
1. A dearth of rivals and
2. The algorithms of commercial creativity, which mean, these days, a tiny few get huge rewards while 98% struggle
Comments
Friend of mine is comfortably off - retired this year not touched his Uni pension at all - no need. He is just having 20 solar panels and a battery added to the roof so that he can reduce his electricity bill of 170 a month to nothing, and expects to pay back the costs in 6 years.
Perhaps this is why rich people are rich when the rest of us plebs aren't?
The main mistake was extending it to IHT on trusts. That was a last straw for some.
One thing government could do, fairly cheaply, that would potentially pay off many times over is to extend the currently too-short foreign income and gains exemption for newcomers. Make it 10 years instead and you’ll make the UK very attentive for incoming CEOs or investors who will have time to build up infrastructure and talent around them.
If there's a 'NeverAcceptBrexit crew', then there's also a "BrexitIsntResposibleForAnything crew", who are equally deluded.
JD Vance and a number of the like-minded on here are outraged when the likes of Lucy Connolly are punished for inciting riots, but more than comfortable when Just Stop Oil are dragged off the Dartford Bridge.
I say a plague on both their houses, but right wingers see Lucy Connolly being banged up for inciting violence as an assault on Freedom of Speech. I believe anyone is free to say whatever they like, but if it breaches societal rules ( not necessarily laws, when the law is an ass) they suffer the consequences.
But it is perhaps an issue for the smaller parties where the question is whether they'll manage any seats in an area or not. They are using 16-seat areas, so you need about 6% to guarantee winning a seat. That's about where the Greens and LibDems are polling, with some smaller Welsh parties below that. There's an argument you should vote tactically. If you are a LibDem supporter in Afan Ogwr Rhondda, would you do better to vote Labour or Plaid? What if you support Propel or Gwlad?
Also, even in countries with PR where tactical voting is largely unnecessary, it's quite common to see voters coagulating around two main parties. Coming first in an election carries a lot of moral authority and there can be a desire to see one's side be first.
The UK should look at allowing thousands of people to live in the UK on a low fixed income tax, no or low CGT and zero IHT on condition they bring businesses that employ x number of people or pay x corporation tax.
It wouldn’t negatively affect 99% of the population’s lives but attract in business, employment, spending and growth. They can’t because people would scream about it being “unfair” but they should - it’s money that would otherwise be going elsewhere.
The truth is Bromley looks toward London (it's a commuter suburb) rather than to Kent. Needless to say, even if Reform win control of Bromley next year (which isn't likely), it would still be a long journey toward the objective Reform want so like most of Reform's ideas, it has a superficial attraction but rather like ice cream in this week's weather, that attraction will qwuickly melt away and it will all look very messy.
As usual, you are also wrong about the travelcards themselves. You have the Oyster 60+ Travelcards (so non pensioners can also get free travel and it's a useful incentive to keep older people in work which may or mat not be a good thing) and then you have the Freedom Passes for those aged over 66.
I'm also interested in how you think you are going to sell the idea blind people and people over 90 shouldn't be entitled to free travel - I don't think we are at that level of financial stringency with our flourishing economy.
Unfortunately your prediction is almost certainly correct. It won't happen because the Burghers of e.g. Bootle will scream that its unfair.
The petty mindedness of the left-leaning masses in Britain in relation to 'fairness' will almost certainly end up bankrupting the country.
But I do think that if you have money, it is easier to make more money. And the more money you have, the easier it is to make more.
https://www.icaew.com/insights/viewpoints-on-the-news/2024/may-2024/chart-of-the-week-public-sector-productivity
As ever, measuring productivity is challenging, but government is very bad at spending money effectively, but the public sector becomes more efficient (or slightly less inefficient) when you control it tightly.
Like Rupert Lowe we are also mindful of Afghans arriving on our beaches in Zodiac inflatable rib boats.
“I have taken a break precisely because I got fed up with wading through Leon’s shit; most of the content he spams into this forum nowadays consists either of repetitive bigoted vomit, self-obsessed wank, or gratuitous abuse. There is no analysis or intelligence or insight, at all. Day after day, it just becomes tiresome; PB should be about more than one man’s lifelong attempt to compensate for his under-endowment.
In no way can my absence be interpreted as any support whatsoever for Leon’s thesis that he’s the only racist left in the village.
I saw Leon’s photos of his bits and bobs from across the world; the most valuable souvenir you can get from any travel is a broader perspective, yet it is the one thing that he never manages to bring home.”
That’s all well and good, but on the upside I got you to shut up and leave, so it’s kinda swings and roundabouts?
The worldwide division is really one of class rather than of nationality or religion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1kbLwvqugk is an example of a more recent song.
Lots of people who cycle have friends who have been put in hospital after experiences on such infrastructure. Another slogan is "Paint is not Infrastructure". The original Dutch turn to greater equality in the 1970s to de-emphasise motor traffic was around the slogan "Stop the Child Murder" (Stop de Kindermoord) around road deaths. *
The first public use in the UK I am aware of was when a contraflow cycle lane was proposed directly along the outside of a row of parked cars in Harrogate in 2018.
* Historical Explanation: https://youtu.be/XuBdf9jYj7o?t=13
Voting bill by bill would be more sensible by Kemi or whoever was Tory leader then
Still, I look forward to the IMF insisting that all such expenditure is slashed for the next few decades as part of a future bailout....
You are also, again presumably, carefully assuming that the heirs actually want to farm every single farm of that 20%, rather than liquidate it, in which case the issue becomes irrelevant. In a field where a decidedly non-trivial proportion of the *existing* farmers are already jacking it in because e.g. of lack of labour thanks to you know what.
And the wrecker is still campaigning on "don't let x, y, or z betray Brexit" - as if anyone in the UK owes it any kind of allegiance.
UK doctors are still the 7th highest paid in Europe on average, even if lower paid than their US and Australian counterparts
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/11/doctors-salaries-which-countries-pay-the-most-and-least-in-europe
This is why MAGA hates her. She's a poster girl for the traditional American dream, small-town girl who began singing country songs, dating the star (American) football player, and becoming a self-made billionaire. She is the epitome of Republican values... and yet dares to have views on politics and endorses Democrats.
Amid all the doom and gloom, it’s easy to overlook that economic growth has been our natural condition since about 1800.
It's a relevant question if the polls continue to show the Conservative Parliamentary representation reduced by half to two thirds.
My argument is if you become Reform's "junior" partner (and therefore enabler) you will be decimated as the LDs were after the Coalition and even providing C&S to an unpopular Government is still guilt by association.
It's just the Trump family trying to turn US libel law into what it is already in the UK - a means for the very wealthy to silence any criticism of them.
Trump himself has taken it a bit further, as he's discovered the power of the presidency enables him to extort very large amounts of money from various corporate entities.
EXC: On yesterday's call Trump signalled the US would be prepared to provide security guarantees for Ukraine
Details unclear at this stage but it's a shift from White House ruling it out and a boost for UK/France-led coalition of the willing
https://x.com/estwebber/status/1955915832644485502
Dolly Parton and Taylor Swifts are huge fans of each other, by the way.
"The weak global economy will remain a drag on UK GDP growth for a while yet," she said.
"The full drag on business investment from April's tax rises has yet to be felt. And the ongoing speculation about further tax rises in the Autumn Budget will probably keep consumers in a cautious mood."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ml42ww740o
Two of the 3 months for Q2 were contractions.
https://x.com/julianHjessop/status/1955894198504169832
@julianHjessop
Expenditure breakdown of the UK GDP data is not great...
Growth was led by government spending and "gross capital formation: other" (mainly "changes in inventories and acquisitions less disposal of valuables, as well as the expenditure alignment adjustment").
Otherwise, consumer spending and investment were both weak.
Also, the brexitwave...
When her back catalogue was acquired by the pretty disreputable and manipulative mogul Scooter Braun, she fought back by re-recording all her albums and making sure only her new versions would be played or used, becoming something of a heroine to her tens of millions of followers.
Immigration increased under Boris despite Brexit so there are still plenty of people seeking farm labour, only now is it falling, indeed with fewer vacancies now than jobseekers even Brit workers may start to do low paid farm work again, especially given the minimum wage is up again
The triumph of capitalism is everywhere - it's the ultimate aspiration but also the ultimate narcotic. Once you have enough, it's never enough and you want more. The lifestyle becomes the goal - a better car, horse riding lessons, the outside jacuzzi, the better holiday etc.
Some years ago, I was advocating a DARPA for the UK. Politicians I spoke to were enthusiastic but wanted changes - pick the winners and push big money at the them.
Which, of course, breaks the DARPA idea. Which is to disperse relatively small amounts of money in competitions and competitive tenders to try and spark innovation. Yes, the Internet. But also many others. Did you know that the DARPA self driving challenges, many years ago, sparked a generation of engineers, at university, to take a real look at the problem?
The U.K. has a long history of backing the wrong technology at vast expense, because of this.
Post WWII, it looked as if there were two propulsion technologies for submarines that would be the future - nuclear and high test peroxide (HTP). The UK bet all in on HTP.
After the experience of HMS Exploder and HMS Excruciator, it became clear that this was a propulsion system for the clinically insane.
But HTP could be used as a rocket engine oxidiser. Many millions had been invested in plants to make HTP. So British rocket engines were mandated (as far as possible) to use HTP. Which crippled both the military and nasacant civilian rocket projects.
So he’s gone back to ranting about Brexit and how it’s broken the country. When I ask him how, he says “just look around. Look at London”
When I ask him to be really really specific he changes the subject
It’s fascinating. We see this phenomenon here on Late Stage PB, as well
their homeworktreasury policy on this was all good.1. You only need to survive 3 years to avoid IHT totally - it's graduated after that. And any competent family would have sewn this up years ago if the second generation is working in the farm (well, they're actively involved in the business, so ...)
2. Those blokes with muddy wellington boots called "farmers" don't agree.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/13/dairy-farmers-worker-shortage-threatening-uk-food-security
https://i2-prod.mylondon.news/incoming/article23570656.ece/ALTERNATES/s1200e/0_Isle_of_Dogs__Canary_Wharf_Panorama_1995.jpg
On the positive side, all you needed to deal with it was lots of hydrogen monoxide ...
On the other, if the Conservatives become Reform's minions, it will likely hasten their death as a party elsewhere.
I think the moral here is that holding the balance of power is a lot less fun than it's cracked up to be.
You can die even within 3 years after a gift and any IHT even graduated hits family farms.
We now have the highest minumum wage ever and more job seekers chasing vacancies than there are job vacancies for any job for them
The guy behind this a) was involved in the Farm Tax policy and b) has a long held and well known political bent to wanting massively increase things like IHT to claw a lot more back from people in the name of fairness.
Just days after we discussed data centres for AI (and old photos, apparently) and their energy needs, so Ed has rushed out a report.
Impact of growth of data centres on energy consumption
This report examines how the growth of digital services, and the data centres that support them, affects energy consumption in the UK.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/impact-of-growth-of-data-centres-on-energy-consumption
On reflection I think it might be inevitable. The site was founded in the noughties, we’ve been here twenty years and we’ve all gotten a lot older (me included). Some of us have literally died. So the decay in commentary value is baked in: we simply don’t attract enough newcomers to compensate for the Agues of Time
However I stand by my other point. This slide is not helped by a groupthink Centrist Dork hostility to right wing ideas - especially when the populist right is in the ascendant. It’s the equivalent of a British football website refusing to discuss northern clubs run by wealthy foreigners
@williamglenn is the canary in the coal mine
I actually thought of you when I wrote THIS:
“I have a hardcore leftwing friend who, I suspect, is deeply uncomfortable with the recent demographic changes in Britain. Like many others. However he simply cannot say this outright as that would make him Tommy Robinson
So he’s gone back to ranting about Brexit and how it’s broken the country. When I ask him how, he says “just look around. Look at London”
When I ask him to be really really specific he changes the subject
It’s fascinating. We see this phenomenon here on Late Stage PB, as well”
For a number, even in the most generous area of the country the amount spent on "cycling" by Transport for London is roughly £1.2 billion over the 20 years 2002 to 2022 - and most would agree that that has been quite transformative so far. Albeit the current plan runs through until 2040. And it also covers much of walking / wheeling. That is about £60 million per annum. Amounts have gradually increased (75% of that is the second decade), so even now it is only maybe £25-30 per head per annum in London.
That is 5x per annum less than the £300 million that has just been spent on a single M25 junction at Wisley.
For RefUK this would be another "we will save all this money wasted on DEI by all these Councils", then when they get in the amount is pretty much zero. Of course it was clear from the budgets and annual reports, but they do marketing, not policy. Then they will be scrabbling around cutting services that are already only skeletons to meet their stupid promises - see (unfortunately) Notts and Derbys.
Huge effort into stadium tour last year, hundreds of people involved and it grossed a billion dollars. Shows are sexy but not slutty, can go with the family.
Not for me, but can understand the success.
When this site was founded the Tories were still the main right of centre party and certainly once Cameron took over still the most popular party with the upper middle class who are found disproportionally on here.
Now Reform are the main right of centre party and most popular with the white working class, who aren't found in significant numbers on PB while many of the upper middle class think Farage is a populist oik
I don't agree with you about Labour staying in power in Wales next year
All the signs are labour are heading for a tanking and the likely winner will be Plaid with Reform a close second
You do not live in Wales so haven't experienced the disaster that is Welsh Labour and it would be toxic for Plaid to allow labour to continue in government
That doesn't mean that Wales will have a stable Senedd, but I do expect 'an anybody but labour attitude' post the election next spring
Eg what did "accepting EU membership" look like for you all those years?
I posted this morning because you had the cheek to try and use my ten or eleven day absence in support of your own point, when it's your behaviour that drove me away in the first place, as it has others before.
That you got so quickly from bemoaning regulars' leaving to congratulating yourself on having driven yet another one away is tragic fail of both self awareness and argumentation.
It’s not really a mystery why she’s successful. The reason she is massively weirdly successful is
1. A dearth of rivals and
2. The algorithms of commercial creativity, which mean, these days, a tiny few get huge rewards while 98% struggle