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.
Doctors striking isn't some new thing. Consultants struck in 1975 and you can go back further with other healthcare professionals, like nurses threatening to strike in 1948.
(If you want to go back further, there is this despicable event in Canadian history, when in 1934 the doctors at a hospital struck to protest the hiring of a Jewish senior intern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Shame )
UK universities would happily prioritise "the education of properly qualifying UK citizens" if someone was willing to pay for it. Undergraduate home fees have fallen by 26% in real terms since 2017.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
I cannot post all the photographs of A-level celebrations here but a quick check on all the news sites shows we can still use that old joke: why don't they let boys take A-levels?
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.
“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
The concept of 'hostility to right wing ideas' has a built in incoherence. There is no agreement as to what constitutes the set of 'right wing ideas'. The use of the term will vary from forms of social democracy that are fond of private enterprise and liberal liberties to Trumpian friends of Mussolini.
“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.
Jesus. You’re reduced to boasting about “likes”
I get that you’re lonely but that’s an extra level of tragedy we really don’t need before lunch
@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.
Given the massive payrises Labour is giving doctors I suspect that will soon change
“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 most of them think he’s policies are populistic and utterly impractical / unaffordable but understand how popular promising everyone their own utopia is
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
“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
I lose track of flounces. When one is dealing with a parade of identical turquoise smurfs and smurfettes, how are they to be told apart as they depart and return wearing a different identical hat?
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
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
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.
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
Still missing the point. The farmers have lost their trained staff. Thanks to Tory policies.
You don't need to be trained to pick crops and muck out pig styes
So that's what farming looks like from urban Epping? There's a lot more to it than that, especially for dairy.
I am actually in rural Essex now and in Brentwood and Ongar constituency even if still at the top of Epping Forest district area. Though Epping is a small market down, hardly a big urban conurbation even if at the end of the tube line.
Most farmers in Essex are crop or pig farmers not dairy
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
I cannot post all the photographs of A-level celebrations here but a quick check on all the news sites shows we can still use that old joke: why don't they let boys take A-levels?
From a brief glance the proportion of strikingly pretty girls taking A levels is a few % points down from the joyous golden age when it was 100% of candidates. Are they all leaving school at 16 and going into concrete manufacturing apprenticeships?
Indeed, the Rwanda deportation scheme is precisely the kind of thing Labour voters would have supported if it was proposed by Blair. However, as the beastly Tories came up with it they instantly called it inhumane and illegal etc...
Fundamentally solving this isn't that hard, we need to make conditions for the chancers worse in the UK than they are in France. How we achieve that is up for discussion but a genuine refugee will put up with 6 months in a detention camp with no ability to leave to escape actual danger from their home country. A fake asylum seeker will probably decide it's not worth it and stick around in France, chance their arm at going to Sweden or something.
Labour will need to do something or that 22 points they currently have will halve by the time we get to 2029.
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.
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
Still missing the point. The farmers have lost their trained staff. Thanks to Tory policies.
You don't need to be trained to pick crops and muck out pig styes
If you take a close look, it is sties not styes.
If you try to muck out a pig stye with a shovel, you probably need to be able to jump out of the sty ... pronto. Or you will have a pigtooth decoration carved on your rear end.
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
I cannot post all the photographs of A-level celebrations here but a quick check on all the news sites shows we can still use that old joke: why don't they let boys take A-levels?
From a brief glance the proportion of strikingly pretty girls taking A levels is a few % points down from the joyous golden age when it was 100% of candidates. Are they all leaving school at 16 and going into concrete manufacturing apprenticeships?
I'm doing the A-Level meta this year and only tutoring girls. It pulls the batting average up.
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.
Doctors striking isn't some new thing. Consultants struck in 1975 and you can go back further with other healthcare professionals, like nurses threatening to strike in 1948.
(If you want to go back further, there is this despicable event in Canadian history, when in 1934 the doctors at a hospital struck to protest the hiring of a Jewish senior intern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Shame )
UK universities would happily prioritise "the education of properly qualifying UK citizens" if someone was willing to pay for it. Undergraduate home fees have fallen by 26% in real terms since 2017.
I just went to the shops and did some maths on the way to help with the new Welsh system. If we assume 7 parties in each 'pair' - Ref, Plaid, Lab, Con, LD, Green, YP, then calculate what parties 5 to 7 get between them and you can work out what guarantees you a seat in fourth.
If 0% between 5 to 7 (!) then 14.5% required for a guaranteed seat If 5% then 13.6% If 10% then 12.9% If 15% then 12.1% If 20% then 11.5%
Of course that's only if 1, 2, 3 exactly equally split the vote at *party 4 vote times 2* Assuming a 5% spread between the top 3, the minimum required for a seat in the above examples is as follows
0% - 13.3% (12.1% for a 10% spread top 3) 5% - 12.4% (11.2% for 10% spread) 10% - 11.7% (10.5% for 10% spread) 15% - 10.9% (9.2% for 10% spread) 20% - 10.3% (9.1% for 10% spread)
So, realistically, 11% or fractionally above in any seat pair in fourth will get you a seat
Edit - and for any of these, double it and you are guaranteed a second seat if you are runner up in the paired constituency
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
I don't see opening the Soutrh Wales coal mines as the vote winner Farage thinks it is
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
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.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Haha, there’s also video of Hilary Clinton saying similar a decade ago. Bet Blair wouldn’t dare say the same today.
Clinton might not, but Blair definitely would. I think he said as much pretty recently. Obama was known as the deporter in chief by a lot of the hard leftists in the US, they really hated him for that and the drone warfare.
Even with all of the potentially extra-judicial actions that Trump is doing now to get deportations up, he might not beat the number that Obama got in his second term.
The centre left consensus was always that illegal immigration is bad and it decreases wages through illegal labour which competes with working classes. I don't know when that changed but there was a moment that suddenly the left forgot that a big chunk of their voters were in minimum wage jobs and illegal immigrants were competing with them for those jobs.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
Opening South Wales coal mines !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Still more credible than Plaid's ambition for independence. If reform are not fit for government, Plaid certainly aren't.
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
Because it’s quite hard to see them being worse than Labour or The Tories
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
Is that just an excuse to reject a British applicant in favour of accepting a higher paying foreign applicant or am I being cynical? What is the grade requirements of the latter?
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
I don't see opening the Soutrh Wales coal mines as the vote winner Farage thinks it is
Depends. It won't be popular with people at risk of having to actually do the mining.
But those nostalgic for the idea of mining, but at no risk of being sent underground themselves as 21st century Bevin boys, those who want to flick V signs at Ed Milliband, it will be just the job. And they probably overlap pretty closely with Reform's core vote.
(My suspicion remains that Farage is much happier being a gadfly than he would be being in government, and that (unlike BoJo) he knows it. I do wonder what happens if we reach 2028 or so with him at serious risk of being PM.)
@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.
Given the massive payrises Labour is giving doctors I suspect that will soon change
Yes, the net consequence of Brexit and of Sunak's tightening of immigration rules is that Labour has to pay doctors more in order to maintain their numbers.
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
I cannot post all the photographs of A-level celebrations here but a quick check on all the news sites shows we can still use that old joke: why don't they let boys take A-levels?
From a brief glance the proportion of strikingly pretty girls taking A levels is a few % points down from the joyous golden age when it was 100% of candidates. Are they all leaving school at 16 and going into concrete manufacturing apprenticeships?
I'm doing the A-Level meta this year and only tutoring girls. It pulls the batting average up.
The return of 100% of A level candidates being strikingly pretty girls is overdue. I would in exchange suggest the abolition and criminalisation of photos of graduates throwing mortar boards in the air.
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.
Yes, there were articles about it at the time of the ERAs tour
She also bought back the remainder of her back catalogue so now owns all the rights to all of her music
She, or her management team, or both, are very, very smart
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
And on a point of pedantry, Farage is an arse, rather than an oik.
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.
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
Still missing the point. The farmers have lost their trained staff. Thanks to Tory policies.
You don't need to be trained to pick crops and muck out pig styes
Actually farming is increasingly high tech, capital intensive and incomes can only be maintained by land consolidation and mechanisation. The idea of cider supping yokels watching a few sheep are long gone. It is very hard for agricultural workers to become autonomous farmers because the low pay and high capital costs of land and equipment. It's not so much IHT that is killing the family farm so much as the economics of agribusiness making them unviable.
I think Reform surge will fizzle out once : 1. It is filled up with ex Welsh Tories 2. Voters are reminded of its earlier anti-Welsh policies (no Wales sport teams)
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
Because it’s quite hard to see them being worse than Labour or The Tories
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
Opening South Wales coal mines !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Because it is such an absurd suggestion I had forgotten about that. Although there will be a big surge in the sale of industrial scale submersible pumps.
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....!!!!
Maybe THREE QUARTERS OF RESIDENT TAX DODGERS NOW PAYING THEIR TAXES LIKE EVERYONE ELSE is something to cheer?
(Whether those leaving actually are net contributors to the huge extent they compensate for the majority now paying taxes would need to be substantiated I think)*
* Bearing in mind the whole point of being non-dom is to NOT contribute.
"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 ...
Meanwhile the Americans held the Project Nobska meeting - where advances in solid fuel were “joined up” with possible size reductions in nuclear weapons. This meant that solid fuel rockets could fulfil *all* the requirement for military systems.
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.
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
Still missing the point. The farmers have lost their trained staff. Thanks to Tory policies.
You don't need to be trained to pick crops and muck out pig styes
Actually farming is increasingly high tech, capital intensive and incomes can only be maintained by land consolidation and mechanisation. The idea of cider supping yokels watching a few sheep are long gone. It is very hard for agricultural workers to become autonomous farmers because the low pay and high capital costs of land and equipment. It's not so much IHT that is killing the family farm so much as the economics of agribusiness making them unviable.
My uncle was a cowman - in other words a highly skilled and experienced specialist farm worker - and even in 1960-70 his work was highly mechanized, and increasingly so, with the milking machines, tractors, new methods for silage rather than hay, etc. Every bit as much as many a local factory, in terms of the numbers of 1910s workers he ultimately replaced for the same product. Yet that was half a century ago. As pointed out on here even the milking machines are highly automated nowadays.
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....!!!!
Maybe THREE QUARTERS OF RESIDENT TAX DODGERS NOW PAYING THEIR TAXES LIKE EVERYONE ELSE is something to cheer?
(Whether those leaving actually are net contributors to the huge extent they compensate for the majority now paying taxes would need to be substantiated I think)
It's only 25% of Nom Doms with Trusts that have left, the percentage of non dogs without Trusts leaving is much lower.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
"Can't be worse" and "rolling the dice" about covers it, I think.
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.
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
Still missing the point. The farmers have lost their trained staff. Thanks to Tory policies.
You don't need to be trained to pick crops and muck out pig styes
If you take a close look, it is sties not styes.
If you try to muck out a pig stye with a shovel, you probably need to be able to jump out of the sty ... pronto. Or you will have a pigtooth decoration carved on your rear end.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
Ah, thanks. Been to both myself. Cardiff was a lot nicer - and much more convenient for my team's meeting in central Cardiff (!) - than Lulsgate which is of course miles on the other side of Bristle.
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.
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
Still missing the point. The farmers have lost their trained staff. Thanks to Tory policies.
You don't need to be trained to pick crops and muck out pig styes
Actually farming is increasingly high tech, capital intensive and incomes can only be maintained by land consolidation and mechanisation. The idea of cider supping yokels watching a few sheep are long gone. It is very hard for agricultural workers to become autonomous farmers because the low pay and high capital costs of land and equipment. It's not so much IHT that is killing the family farm so much as the economics of agribusiness making them unviable.
My uncle was a cowman - in other words a highly skilled and experienced specialist farm worker - and even in 1960-70 his work was highly mechanized, and increasingly so, with the milking machines, tractors, new methods for silage rather than hay, etc. Every bit as much as many a local factory, in terms of the numbers of 1910s workers he ultimately replaced for the same product. Yet that was half a century ago. As pointed out on here even the milking machines are highly automated nowadays.
Echoes of the calls to conscript the unemployed into social care.
We all underestimate how much goes into the jobs that we don't do.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
We don't use points at Bath. It would be equivlant.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
The blame for Cardiff Airport lies solely with Welsh Labour. Instead of pissing money up the wall buying it, they should have built a decent link road to the M4. I know they have a pathological aversion to building new roads, but the fact the airport is such a pain to get to is the main reason most people in south east Wales choose Bristol (In addition to the fact flights are normally about 50 percent cheaper).
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
We don't use points at Bath. It would be equivlant.
Both sides of the same cheek then for the Bath chaps?
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Immoral sell out is the proper term I think.
Blame the government for not letting us raise the fees inline with inflation.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
Is that just an excuse to reject a British applicant in favour of accepting a higher paying foreign applicant or am I being cynical? What is the grade requirements of the latter?
Its not an excuse. Our course is technically full with students who met the offer and a few who missed by a grade. But we are still being asked to be open to overseas. Technically the applicant did not meet offer (under the Bath rules, which are grade based not points).
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.
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
"Can't be worse" and "rolling the dice" about covers it, I think.
Also “will actually stop mass immigration” and “will actually stop the boats” are fairly important, no?
If Reform enters government and does just those two things, while mismanaging everything else as badly as Labour or the Tories, I will be very satisfied with my Reform, especially as I will probably be a Reform MP
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.
Mine was 1983 and 1985 (did French A Level two years early) and my school used to post them and put them on a notice board. I was at my parents' house in Kerlouan so I had to go to the village doctor's house (the only one with a phone), give his wife a slack handful of 10 franc coins and call the school under her volucrine eye to get my results. It was like a missing chapter from L'education sentimentale.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
The blame for Cardiff Airport lies solely with Welsh Labour. Instead of pissing money up the wall buying it, they should have built a decent link road to the M4. I know they have a pathological aversion to building new roads, but the fact the airport is such a pain to get to is the main reason most people in south east Wales choose Bristol (In addition to the fact flights are normally about 50 percent cheaper).
Irrespective of that it's also consistent with Reform's anti-devolution agenda. Wrecks the Welsh economy (whether actual or potential is irrelevant) and integrates south Wales more tightly with a different part of England from the centre and the north.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
The blame for Cardiff Airport lies solely with Welsh Labour. Instead of pissing money up the wall buying it, they should have built a decent link road to the M4. I know they have a pathological aversion to building new roads, but the fact the airport is such a pain to get to is the main reason most people in south east Wales choose Bristol (In addition to the fact flights are normally about 50 percent cheaper).
Irrespective of that it's also consistent with Reform's anti-devolution agenda. Wrecks the Welsh economy (whether actual or potential is irrelevant) and integrates south Wales more tightly with a different part of England from the centre and the north.
I'm all for an anti-devolution agenda. It's been a disaster for Wales.
Good value when he was a candidate on the apprentice tbh. Solid Thursday night TV. Bosh.
Someone like Skinner - or indeed Skinner - could do extremely well in British politics. Old fashioned cockney/Essex white Brit. Loves family and country. Not entirely stupid. Talks a lot of sense (in the eyes of many), robustly right wing without being rabid
He’s not smooth but then that’s probably a virtue these days. Ten times more articulate than Starmer and twenty times more charismatic than Badenoch
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
The blame for Cardiff Airport lies solely with Welsh Labour. Instead of pissing money up the wall buying it, they should have built a decent link road to the M4. I know they have a pathological aversion to building new roads, but the fact the airport is such a pain to get to is the main reason most people in south east Wales choose Bristol (In addition to the fact flights are normally about 50 percent cheaper).
The link isn't as bad as it was. Cardiff link to Culverhouse Cross, three or four miles along the A48 and then the new wider, faster Five Mile Lane takes you almost to the airport.
Have you travelled from the M49 to Bristol Airport, that is horrendous not least the 2 minute entry into a Ulez zone near Ashton Gate?
Cardiff Airport needs RyanAir. They need cheaper landing charges which is why they only fly to Dublin. With RyanAir in place cheaper flights and more holiday destinations will follow.
( I did criticise the Westminster Labour Government, and my May Government comment is not a criticism just a fact.)
Good value when he was a candidate on the apprentice tbh. Solid Thursday night TV. Bosh.
Someone like Skinner - or indeed Skinner - could do extremely well in British politics. Old fashioned cockney/Essex white Brit. Loves family and country. Not entirely stupid. Talks a lot of sense (in the eyes of many), robustly right wing without being rabid
He’s not smooth but then that’s probably a virtue these days. Ten times more articulate than Starmer and twenty times more charismatic than Badenoch
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
We don't use points at Bath. It would be equivlant.
Does the subject mix affect things, so for example if your home student who missed out was coming in to do chemistry with an AAB offer and they got that A*BB but the A* was in interpretive dance and the Chemistry only got a B would that be the killer (and would she have got accepted for kissing the offer if her A* had been chemistry and the dropped A to a B was in a subject not vital for the degree)?
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.
Mine was 1983 and 1985 (did French A Level two years early) and my school used to post them and put them on a notice board. I was at my parents' house in Kerlouan so I had to go to the village doctor's house (the only one with a phone), give his wife a slack handful of 10 franc coins and call the school under her volucrine eye to get my results. It was like a missing chapter from L'education sentimentale.
I chose to have them posted. No point in going into school to collect them. The post arrived before breakfast, I put the letter on the shelf and had breakfast before opening it. Wound my parents up no end.
Well, it doesn't affect the result, and whatever happened to sang froid?
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.
Mine was 1983 and 1985 (did French A Level two years early) and my school used to post them and put them on a notice board. I was at my parents' house in Kerlouan so I had to go to the village doctor's house (the only one with a phone), give his wife a slack handful of 10 franc coins and call the school under her volucrine eye to get my results. It was like a missing chapter from L'education sentimentale.
I did two A Levels a year early. Which had an entertaining result - when at interview at UCL I got a 2 U offer, and so had a place immediately.
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
The blame for Cardiff Airport lies solely with Welsh Labour. Instead of pissing money up the wall buying it, they should have built a decent link road to the M4. I know they have a pathological aversion to building new roads, but the fact the airport is such a pain to get to is the main reason most people in south east Wales choose Bristol (In addition to the fact flights are normally about 50 percent cheaper).
The link isn't as bad as it was. Cardiff link to Culverhouse Cross, three or four miles along the A48 and then the new wider, faster Five Mile Lane takes you almost to the airport.
Have you travelled from the M49 to Bristol Airport, that is horrendous not least the 2 minute entry into a Ulez zone near Ashton Gate?
Cardiff Airport needs RyanAir. They need cheaper landing charges which is why they only fly to Dublin. With RyanAir in place cheaper flights and more holiday destinations will follow.
( I did criticise the Westminster Labour Government, and my May Government comment is not a criticism just a fact.)
Yes the fact that Bristol airport is also a pain to get to, shows how bad Cardiff must be if people still think it's easier to get to.
I just think the opportunity cost of the money they have sunk into the airport with little to show for it is criminal.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
We don't use points at Bath. It would be equivlant.
Does the subject mix affect things, so for example if your home student who missed out was coming in to do chemistry with an AAB offer and they got that A*BB but the A* was in interpretive dance and the Chemistry only got a B would that be the killer (and would she have got accepted for kissing the offer if her A* had been chemistry and the dropped A to a B was in a subject not vital for the degree)?
Hope this makes sense.
No - we don't discriminate on which of the grades is chemistry, but they do need chemistry as one of he three. We are not completely sure how our admissions team determines which of the near misses they take, apart from widening access (so underprivileged background, free school meals etc) seems to be featuring a lot. Bath has an issue with being rather middle class across the board and it can affect league tables.
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
"Can't be worse" and "rolling the dice" about covers it, I think.
Also “will actually stop mass immigration” and “will actually stop the boats” are fairly important, no?
If Reform enters government and does just those two things, while mismanaging everything else as badly as Labour or the Tories, I will be very satisfied with my Reform, especially as I will probably be a Reform MP
Yes, they have 2 strands. The specific (nativist, anti-immigrant) and the general (upset the status quo).
It's essentially the same mix that got Brexit over the line. That's why you'll find that almost all Reform voters who are old enough to have voted in 2016 will have voted Leave.
It's also why - given it's the same drivers, the same pool of voters, the same leader - that we shouldn't, if we have any sense, touch it with a bargepole.
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.
Mine was 1983 and 1985 (did French A Level two years early) and my school used to post them and put them on a notice board. I was at my parents' house in Kerlouan so I had to go to the village doctor's house (the only one with a phone), give his wife a slack handful of 10 franc coins and call the school under her volucrine eye to get my results. It was like a missing chapter from L'education sentimentale.
I did two A Levels a year early. Which had an entertaining result - when at interview at UCL I got a 2 U offer, and so had a place immediately.
They clearly wanted you. I had Maths in the bag when applying and Warwick prostituted themselves to get me as they thought I was heading for Cambridge.
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.
Mine was 1983 and 1985 (did French A Level two years early) and my school used to post them and put them on a notice board. I was at my parents' house in Kerlouan so I had to go to the village doctor's house (the only one with a phone), give his wife a slack handful of 10 franc coins and call the school under her volucrine eye to get my results. It was like a missing chapter from L'education sentimentale.
It is forty five years to the date since mine the first time around. The date is seared into my mind because it coincided with my parents's silver wedding anniversary. It was a memorable, but not a good anniversary for my mum and dad.
If your A level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us and here I am today, installing lights for a helicopter landing pad in my garden.
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
"Can't be worse" and "rolling the dice" about covers it, I think.
Also “will actually stop mass immigration” and “will actually stop the boats” are fairly important, no?
If Reform enters government and does just those two things, while mismanaging everything else as badly as Labour or the Tories, I will be very satisfied with my Reform, especially as I will probably be a Reform MP
So that Reform manifesto for 2029 in summary: Stop the boats; stop inward migration, roll the dice, can't be worse, our mismanagement will match that of Labour and Tories, Leon will be sitting in the House of Commons.
What, may I ask, can possibly go wrong?
Just one ask of Leon MP: Can we have test matches back on terrestrial telly please.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
We don't use points at Bath. It would be equivlant.
Does the subject mix affect things, so for example if your home student who missed out was coming in to do chemistry with an AAB offer and they got that A*BB but the A* was in interpretive dance and the Chemistry only got a B would that be the killer (and would she have got accepted for kissing the offer if her A* had been chemistry and the dropped A to a B was in a subject not vital for the degree)?
Hope this makes sense.
No - we don't discriminate on which of the grades is chemistry, but they do need chemistry as one of he three. We are not completely sure how our admissions team determines which of the near misses they take, apart from widening access (so underprivileged background, free school meals etc) seems to be featuring a lot. Bath has an issue with being rather middle class across the board and it can affect league tables.
Not a criticism of you. That seems very backward. If a kid gets A* in Chemistry for a Chemistry degree, I would be giving them a break on missing by one grade on another subject. Vice versa, Chemistry being the weak grade, then I can see it being more of a problem.
@JeremyClarkson · 3h If your A level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us and here I am today, installing lights for a helicopter landing pad in my garden.
A very pleasant upside surprise in the S household today, after an early morning drive to school.
I cannot post all the photographs of A-level celebrations here but a quick check on all the news sites shows we can still use that old joke: why don't they let boys take A-levels?
From a brief glance the proportion of strikingly pretty girls taking A levels is a few % points down from the joyous golden age when it was 100% of candidates. Are they all leaving school at 16 and going into concrete manufacturing apprenticeships?
I'm doing the A-Level meta this year and only tutoring girls. It pulls the batting average up.
The return of 100% of A level candidates being strikingly pretty girls is overdue. I would in exchange suggest the abolition and criminalisation of photos of graduates throwing mortar boards in the air.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
We don't use points at Bath. It would be equivlant.
Does the subject mix affect things, so for example if your home student who missed out was coming in to do chemistry with an AAB offer and they got that A*BB but the A* was in interpretive dance and the Chemistry only got a B would that be the killer (and would she have got accepted for kissing the offer if her A* had been chemistry and the dropped A to a B was in a subject not vital for the degree)?
Hope this makes sense.
No - we don't discriminate on which of the grades is chemistry, but they do need chemistry as one of he three. We are not completely sure how our admissions team determines which of the near misses they take, apart from widening access (so underprivileged background, free school meals etc) seems to be featuring a lot. Bath has an issue with being rather middle class across the board and it can affect league tables.
Not a criticism of you. That seems very backward. If a kid gets A* in Chemistry for a Chemistry degree, I would be giving them a break on missing by one grade on another subject. Vice versa, Chemistry being the weak grade, then I can see it being more of a problem.
There are lots of factors at play - as I said Bath seems to be on a widening access drive so are prioritising that. To be honest I don't have time to go through all the near misses, but as we have taken 17 I expect there are many more who didn't get in and you could probably make a good case for a fair number of them. At the end of the day the 123 who met offer were straight in. Thats the way to ensure you get your place.
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
We don't use points at Bath. It would be equivlant.
Does the subject mix affect things, so for example if your home student who missed out was coming in to do chemistry with an AAB offer and they got that A*BB but the A* was in interpretive dance and the Chemistry only got a B would that be the killer (and would she have got accepted for kissing the offer if her A* had been chemistry and the dropped A to a B was in a subject not vital for the degree)?
Hope this makes sense.
No - we don't discriminate on which of the grades is chemistry, but they do need chemistry as one of he three. We are not completely sure how our admissions team determines which of the near misses they take, apart from widening access (so underprivileged background, free school meals etc) seems to be featuring a lot. Bath has an issue with being rather middle class across the board and it can affect league tables.
Not a criticism of you. That seems very backward. If a kid gets A* in Chemistry for a Chemistry degree, I would be giving them a break on missing by one grade on another subject. Vice versa, Chemistry being the weak grade, then I can see it being more of a problem.
There are lots of factors at play - as I said Bath seems to be on a widening access drive so are prioritising that. To be honest I don't have time to go through all the near misses, but as we have taken 17 I expect there are many more who didn't get in and you could probably make a good case for a fair number of them. At the end of the day the 123 who met offer were straight in. Thats the way to ensure you get your place.
My solution to all of this which I have made for I think the entire time I have posted on here to end the overall nonsense. Post A-Level results applications. Then its a pretty simple did you get above the bar required, yes / no. If oversubscribed, look at a candidates peers at their school, did they over achieve, you can give them a bit of a higher weighting.
@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.
I think you are perhaps mistaken there. They may not get broad support, but in patches they could.
And a significant minority of Ref UK supporters are keen on Yaxley-Lennon, so might follow. That surely is a key Advance etc target group.
If your A level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us and here I am today, installing lights for a helicopter landing pad in my garden.
Quite an interesting comment in the chat 'An old bloke once told me the C Class students work for themselves. The A Class students work for the C Class students. And the B Class students for the government! Don't reakon he was wrong!'
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.
Mine was 1983 and 1985 (did French A Level two years early) and my school used to post them and put them on a notice board. I was at my parents' house in Kerlouan so I had to go to the village doctor's house (the only one with a phone), give his wife a slack handful of 10 franc coins and call the school under her volucrine eye to get my results. It was like a missing chapter from L'education sentimentale.
I did two A Levels a year early. Which had an entertaining result - when at interview at UCL I got a 2 U offer, and so had a place immediately.
They clearly wanted you. I had Maths in the bag when applying and Warwick prostituted themselves to get me as they thought I was heading for Cambridge.
That was a standard UCL offer at the time. Basic matriculation
I got the same offer - “two Es and you’re in”. I guess it was UCL’s way of competing with Oxbridge. If they saw a candidate they liked they made their offer very hard to refuse
It made my A Level day delightfully stress free. Unlike all my peers I knew I’d gotten in to my chosen uni. I remember strolling to the college to get the actual results on a beautiful sunny morning and feeling very blithe
I got BBC in the end. Stop laughing at the back, mister Pornhub
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.
So I will shortly be interviewing and no doubt offering a place to an overseas applicant. We've also just rejected a student who got A*BB rather than the offered AAB. (So one up, one down). They have a right to be angry, I think.
Is A*BB not the same UCAS points as AAB?
Is that just an excuse to reject a British applicant in favour of accepting a higher paying foreign applicant or am I being cynical? What is the grade requirements of the latter?
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
"Can't be worse" and "rolling the dice" about covers it, I think.
Also “will actually stop mass immigration” and “will actually stop the boats” are fairly important, no?
If Reform enters government and does just those two things, while mismanaging everything else as badly as Labour or the Tories, I will be very satisfied with my Reform, especially as I will probably be a Reform MP
Yes, they have 2 strands. The specific (nativist, anti-immigrant) and the general (upset the status quo).
It's essentially the same mix that got Brexit over the line. That's why you'll find that almost all Reform voters who are old enough to have voted in 2016 will have voted Leave.
It's also why - given it's the same drivers, the same pool of voters, the same leader - that we shouldn't, if we have any sense, touch it with a bargepole.
Reform voters want vast and increasing and better run amounts of the status quo. This is lost of many commentators. The status quo popular with Reform voters includes: NHS, cradle to grave welfare, free education to 18, state pensions, NATO, proper transport infrastructure, social housing.
Every one of the expensive bits of the state.
This truth governs all the rest of how Reform would act in government.
@JeremyClarkson · 3h If your A level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us and here I am today, installing lights for a helicopter landing pad in my garden.
Yeah because every child has parents with connections to the local newspaper and can procure a position. Going to school and being mates with Andy Wilman is also available to all of us I guess.
Good value when he was a candidate on the apprentice tbh. Solid Thursday night TV. Bosh.
Someone like Skinner - or indeed Skinner - could do extremely well in British politics. Old fashioned cockney/Essex white Brit. Loves family and country. Not entirely stupid. Talks a lot of sense (in the eyes of many), robustly right wing without being rabid
He’s not smooth but then that’s probably a virtue these days. Ten times more articulate than Starmer and twenty times more charismatic than Badenoch
He would do well in Reform but not well in the big cities or university towns
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
In which case Plaid would govern with Labour support most likely.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
Nice try. Have you seen the Reform prospectus? I despise the Tories, particularly the useless Welsh Tories, but even they are a step up from Welsh Reform.
Is there a post-2021 Welsh Reform prospectus - do you have a link?
No, just from ad hoc interviews on local telly. The closure of Cardiff Airport has been touted, as have the reintroduction of grammar schools, the return to a default 30mph, rolling back NetZero, and more privatisation within the NHS. None of which would cheer me up.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
HAng on, isn't closing Rhoose a Net Zero thing? What am I missing?
Well yes, but that is not the thinking behind the call for closure.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
The blame for Cardiff Airport lies solely with Welsh Labour. Instead of pissing money up the wall buying it, they should have built a decent link road to the M4. I know they have a pathological aversion to building new roads, but the fact the airport is such a pain to get to is the main reason most people in south east Wales choose Bristol (In addition to the fact flights are normally about 50 percent cheaper).
Irrespective of that it's also consistent with Reform's anti-devolution agenda. Wrecks the Welsh economy (whether actual or potential is irrelevant) and integrates south Wales more tightly with a different part of England from the centre and the north.
Cardiff airport has always been loss making and it simply doesn't serve anyone who lives in North or Mid Wales because getting there would take all day.
Hence I suspect there are a lot of votes available elsewhere from closing the airport.
“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
This is an astute and interesting point
No-one has yet, SFAICS, ventured on PB to give a reasoned account of why people should support Reform on account of their ability to govern the UK really well.
"Can't be worse" and "rolling the dice" about covers it, I think.
Also “will actually stop mass immigration” and “will actually stop the boats” are fairly important, no?
If Reform enters government and does just those two things, while mismanaging everything else as badly as Labour or the Tories, I will be very satisfied with my Reform, especially as I will probably be a Reform MP
Yes, they have 2 strands. The specific (nativist, anti-immigrant) and the general (upset the status quo).
It's essentially the same mix that got Brexit over the line. That's why you'll find that almost all Reform voters who are old enough to have voted in 2016 will have voted Leave.
It's also why - given it's the same drivers, the same pool of voters, the same leader - that we shouldn't, if we have any sense, touch it with a bargepole.
A surprisingly high percentage of Reform voters would now vote Remain, given another chance.
22% of Reform would vote Remain and 44% of Con. 24% of 2016 Leave voters want another referendum in the next 5 years too, even though the outcome would look very much a Rejoin victory.
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.
Mine was 1983 and 1985 (did French A Level two years early) and my school used to post them and put them on a notice board. I was at my parents' house in Kerlouan so I had to go to the village doctor's house (the only one with a phone), give his wife a slack handful of 10 franc coins and call the school under her volucrine eye to get my results. It was like a missing chapter from L'education sentimentale.
I did two A Levels a year early. Which had an entertaining result - when at interview at UCL I got a 2 U offer, and so had a place immediately.
They clearly wanted you. I had Maths in the bag when applying and Warwick prostituted themselves to get me as they thought I was heading for Cambridge.
The group I was in for interview was all A and B predicted - this was back when ABB would get you in Unis like UCL.
At the end of the tour, talks etc, they called us in, one by one to have a final discussion and an offer. The first person in told us that he’d ben asked what offer *he wanted*. And got it. The next person in had the same and asked for a lower offer. And got that.
I moved myself to the back of the queue. The guy before me asked for EE and got it. When asked, I deflected by talking about other Unis I was looking at. After the 3rd ask deflected, the Prof announced he was giving me a UU offer.
Other people on the course, were in different groups to this, and got real offers.
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.
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
Still missing the point. The farmers have lost their trained staff. Thanks to Tory policies.
You don't need to be trained to pick crops and muck out pig styes
Actually farming is increasingly high tech, capital intensive and incomes can only be maintained by land consolidation and mechanisation. The idea of cider supping yokels watching a few sheep are long gone. It is very hard for agricultural workers to become autonomous farmers because the low pay and high capital costs of land and equipment. It's not so much IHT that is killing the family farm so much as the economics of agribusiness making them unviable.
Which is why we need to support family farms even more as they already have the land and know how to manage it.
In any case I was talking farm labourers not farmers
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(If you want to go back further, there is this despicable event in Canadian history, when in 1934 the doctors at a hospital struck to protest the hiring of a Jewish senior intern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Shame )
UK universities would happily prioritise "the education of properly qualifying UK citizens" if someone was willing to pay for it. Undergraduate home fees have fallen by 26% in real terms since 2017.
The only way to really remove Welsh Labour from power is to vote Reform or Tory
I get that you’re lonely but that’s an extra level of tragedy we really don’t need before lunch
I am actually in rural Essex now and in Brentwood and Ongar constituency even if still at the top of Epping Forest district area. Though Epping is a small market down, hardly a big urban conurbation even if at the end of the tube line.
Most farmers in Essex are crop or pig farmers not dairy
Fundamentally solving this isn't that hard, we need to make conditions for the chancers worse in the UK than they are in France. How we achieve that is up for discussion but a genuine refugee will put up with 6 months in a detention camp with no ability to leave to escape actual danger from their home country. A fake asylum seeker will probably decide it's not worth it and stick around in France, chance their arm at going to Sweden or something.
Labour will need to do something or that 22 points they currently have will halve by the time we get to 2029.
If you try to muck out a pig stye with a shovel, you probably need to be able to jump out of the sty ... pronto. Or you will have a pigtooth decoration carved on your rear end.
If we assume 7 parties in each 'pair' - Ref, Plaid, Lab, Con, LD, Green, YP, then calculate what parties 5 to 7 get between them and you can work out what guarantees you a seat in fourth.
If 0% between 5 to 7 (!) then 14.5% required for a guaranteed seat
If 5% then 13.6%
If 10% then 12.9%
If 15% then 12.1%
If 20% then 11.5%
Of course that's only if 1, 2, 3 exactly equally split the vote at *party 4 vote times 2*
Assuming a 5% spread between the top 3, the minimum required for a seat in the above examples is as follows
0% - 13.3% (12.1% for a 10% spread top 3)
5% - 12.4% (11.2% for 10% spread)
10% - 11.7% (10.5% for 10% spread)
15% - 10.9% (9.2% for 10% spread)
20% - 10.3% (9.1% for 10% spread)
So, realistically, 11% or fractionally above in any seat pair in fourth will get you a seat
Edit - and for any of these, double it and you are guaranteed a second seat if you are runner up in the paired constituency
Even with all of the potentially extra-judicial actions that Trump is doing now to get deportations up, he might not beat the number that Obama got in his second term.
The centre left consensus was always that illegal immigration is bad and it decreases wages through illegal labour which competes with working classes. I don't know when that changed but there was a moment that suddenly the left forgot that a big chunk of their voters were in minimum wage jobs and illegal immigrants were competing with them for those jobs.
They have suggested the Southern M4 relief road at Newport would be built. I'm up for that.
But those nostalgic for the idea of mining, but at no risk of being sent underground themselves as 21st century Bevin boys, those who want to flick V signs at Ed Milliband, it will be just the job. And they probably overlap pretty closely with Reform's core vote.
(My suspicion remains that Farage is much happier being a gadfly than he would be being in government, and that (unlike BoJo) he knows it. I do wonder what happens if we reach 2028 or so with him at serious risk of being PM.)
She also bought back the remainder of her back catalogue so now owns all the rights to all of her music
She, or her management team, or both, are very, very smart
1. It is filled up with ex Welsh Tories
2. Voters are reminded of its earlier anti-Welsh policies (no Wales sport teams)
The best vote predictor for new system is:
https://jaclarner.github.io/senedd_etholiad_sim/
The first 4 or 5 seats in each 6 seat constituency are pretty much locked in. But there are lots of very tight contests for 6th seat
They bought these for (I think) about $1k each in the bankruptcy sale.
Lumina is now the proud owner of 17 electric Nikola semi trucks.
Representing $6m of capex. These vehicles will go into our electric excavation operations later this year.
https://x.com/ahmedshubber25/status/1955709990192472126
(Whether those leaving actually are net contributors to the huge extent they compensate for the majority now paying taxes would need to be substantiated I think)*
* Bearing in mind the whole point of being non-dom is to NOT contribute.
Rhoose is a great airport unfortunately there are, even in the summer, around half a dozen flights a day, and it is owned by Welsh Government. The May Government refused landing charge reductions for fear it would harm Bristol Airport, which is awfully oversubscribed and too small.
Cardiff Airport is another disappointing dereliction of duty from Westminster Labour.
We all underestimate how much goes into the jobs that we don't do.
The only man in both the Strictly & London Mayoral Election betting
@iamtomskinner
To win Strictly - 12/1
Next London Mayor - 25/1
337/1 double, anyone?
https://x.com/LadPolitics/status/1955917261874639212
If Reform enters government and does just those two things, while mismanaging everything else as badly as Labour or the Tories, I will be very satisfied with my Reform, especially as I will probably be a Reform MP
Oh
Melania Trump Threatens to Sue Hunter Biden for $1 Billion Over Epstein Claims
He’s not smooth but then that’s probably a virtue these days. Ten times more articulate than Starmer and twenty times more charismatic than Badenoch
Have you travelled from the M49 to Bristol Airport, that is horrendous not least the 2 minute entry into a Ulez zone near Ashton Gate?
Cardiff Airport needs RyanAir. They need cheaper landing charges which is why they only fly to Dublin. With RyanAir in place cheaper flights and more holiday destinations will follow.
( I did criticise the Westminster Labour Government, and my May Government comment is not a criticism just a fact.)
Hope this makes sense.
Well, it doesn't affect the result, and whatever happened to sang froid?
I just think the opportunity cost of the money they have sunk into the airport with little to show for it is criminal.
It's essentially the same mix that got Brexit over the line. That's why you'll find that almost all Reform voters who are old enough to have voted in 2016 will have voted Leave.
It's also why - given it's the same drivers, the same pool of voters, the same leader - that we shouldn't, if we have any sense, touch it with a bargepole.
https://x.com/jeremyclarkson/status/1955889916388192273
If your A level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us and here I am today, installing lights for a helicopter landing pad in my garden.
What, may I ask, can possibly go wrong?
Just one ask of Leon MP: Can we have test matches back on terrestrial telly please.
·
3h
If your A level results are disappointing, don’t worry. I got a C and two Us and here I am today, installing lights for a helicopter landing pad in my garden.
https://x.com/JeremyClarkson/status/1955889916388192273
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/14/a-level-results-day-grades-hit-record-high/ (£££)
More evidence of Starmer's women problem.
And a significant minority of Ref UK supporters are keen on Yaxley-Lennon, so might follow. That surely is a key Advance etc target group.
The A Class students work for the C Class students.
And the B Class students for the government!
Don't reakon he was wrong!'
https://x.com/robinsaviation/status/1955926073893597260
I got the same offer - “two Es and you’re in”. I guess it was UCL’s way of competing with Oxbridge. If they saw a candidate they liked they made their offer very hard to refuse
It made my A Level day delightfully stress free. Unlike all my peers I knew I’d gotten in to my chosen uni. I remember strolling to the college to get the actual results on a beautiful sunny morning and feeling very blithe
I got BBC in the end. Stop laughing at the back, mister Pornhub
Every one of the expensive bits of the state.
This truth governs all the rest of how Reform would act in government.
Hence I suspect there are a lot of votes available elsewhere from closing the airport.
22% of Reform would vote Remain and 44% of Con. 24% of 2016 Leave voters want another referendum in the next 5 years too, even though the outcome would look very much a Rejoin victory.
https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3lviihzeadc2d
There is a growing disparity between opinions of Brexit and of Farage that at some point will have to be resolved.
At the end of the tour, talks etc, they called us in, one by one to have a final discussion and an offer. The first person in told us that he’d ben asked what offer *he wanted*. And got it. The next person in had the same and asked for a lower offer. And got that.
I moved myself to the back of the queue. The guy before me asked for EE and got it. When asked, I deflected by talking about other Unis I was looking at. After the 3rd ask deflected, the Prof announced he was giving me a UU offer.
Other people on the course, were in different groups to this, and got real offers.
In any case I was talking farm labourers not farmers