Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
OK, so the direct example I gave was a council. Who got lumbered with Adult Social Care but not the money to pay for Adult Social Care. You don't want to make a personal sacrifice in your living standards, just other people.
We get that. Why do you think the Tories got demolished in the election?
We don't need to cut welfare, we need to cut waste. The poorest in our society not only spend that money quickly, they do so locally. Cut their money, they spend less, local businesses go bust and more people are out of work.
Cut the waste. Welfare is an absurd mess with endless bureaucracy and petty assessments contracted out. Simplify to save. Same with Education or Health - stop tipping money onto the admin bonfire and buy a hosepipe.
Please stop projecting your views about others onto me.
I've been advocating:
Increasing income tax Increasing fuel duty Increasing council tax
All of these would affect me.
I've also been advocating:
Increasing the state retirement age Ending the triple lock Ending wfa
All of these would affect me assuming I live long enough.
Now if you want to cut waste and make public services more efficient then go ahead but it will be far harder to do in practice than to talk about it here.
And it still wont change the fundamental fact that this country has been living beyond its means for decades and that road is finally drawing to and end, so falls in living standards are going to happen.
Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
The problem is that this leads to “We must spend more on everything, all the time” thinking and belief.
In any sane organisation there needs to be cost control.
I’ve actually worked in an organisation that abandoned cost control. The result was actually worse - a pile of parasites transferred in to spend money. On themselves, literally, in a number of cases.
What is needed is a joined up approach to current spending and investment and what those actually mean.
I actually asked the local council about their taxi SEND policy. After ages someone finally admitted that one of the taxi firms had actually asked them if they could use a minibus - drivers at schools times are at a premium. But apparently this would require a professional risk assessment, then a whole safety case would need writing up. No money…
Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone 50m I think the main reason Labour’s first year government has gone so badly is that they thought twiddling lightly with a few things would solve everything, instead of making some big plays. Ironically enough, they are failing for the same reason Sunak did.
Yes. October is Reeves's last chance to put herself among the great game changing epoch making chancellors. If she has any sense she will do so in her own reputatioanl interest, even if it loses the next election. IMO in fact it would increase Labour's chance of winning it.
Balance the books, tax the rich, under cover of this tax the middle too, reform property and pensioner taxation, explain the direction of travel and the dire outlook, cut expenditure, create some hope with a long term narrative outlook.
In a few months, 2026 arrives and we start saying 'Might be an election the year after next'. She needs to sort it in 2025.
Higher taxes of the rich and property owners. Lower spending on the old and poor. Increased productivity in the public sector People retiring later.
All together, no exceptions, everyone must feel some pain.
Time for honesty, no more denial.
None of that is addressing the issues. This isn't about not taxing or not spending. Taxes are at record levels. Spending on NHS England is at record levels. And yet despite that the actual healthcare delivered is starved of cash to crisis levels at the point of delivery.
We're burning the cash.
I don't think higher taxes is the answer - most of the rich will evade them We can't spend less on the old and poor - its already a pittance. Productivity is down because conditions are awful. We've managed to deliver both high reading attainment in English primary schools and a teaching profession exhausted and quitting because conditions are so bad. Want people to be more productive? Fix their working environment. People are already retiring later. They will retire sooner as AI takes jobs
You are fiddling around the edges. We need to address the structural failures in our economy - in short we stopped investing. The state doesn't invest so business doesn't invest.
A national program of renewal - borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment. Capitalism on stilts. Put the infrastructure in to allow business to thrive and it will. Make big business properly train and pay its staff in return for corporation tax cuts. Invest into construction so we can build houses for LHAs to bring housing costs down and free money to circulate through the economy. Invest in energy efficiency so we consume less and bring leccy prices down and with it the cost of everything we buy.
The big picture allows you to do the little stuff. Without the big picture we can't do the little stuff.
A local farmer reports that haylage yield is fine, but hay is down ~ 40%. Grass pasture is very poor for the time of year. Going to mean (yet more) increases in food prices going into winter & autumn.
You could draw a line across the country from around Chester to Newcastle, everything south of that has had some form of drought conditions impacting on crops this year. I'd be surprised if it didn't reflect on prices on the shelves
A few farms reporting early harvest up here due to dry conditions, crops ripening much earlier. yield may be down where crop growth has been stunted
Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
The problem is that this leads to “We must spend more on everything, all the time” thinking and belief.
In any sane organisation there needs to be cost control.
I’ve actually worked in an organisation that abandoned cost control. The result was actually worse - a pile of parasites transferred in to spend money. On themselves, literally, in a number of cases.
What is needed is a joined up approach to current spending and investment and what those actually mean.
I actually asked the local council about their taxi SEND policy. After ages someone finally admitted that one of the taxi firms had actually asked them if they could use a minibus - drivers at schools times are at a premium. But apparently this would require a professional risk assessment, then a whole safety case would need writing up. No money…
Yup. We can't afford £150 to do the paperwork. But we can overspend the school transport budget by £750 as that is flexible, so lets do that. We spend more because we can't afford to spend the little bit to save the big bit.
I don’t have a problem with CGT on your main residence as long as inflation is taken into account. In 1985, Mr. Fairlie buys a house for £100,000 in Greenock and Mr. Red buys a house for £100,000 in Edinburgh. After inflation, £100,000 is now £310,000. In 2025, Mr. Fairlie sells his house for £300,000 and Mr. Red sells his for £500,000. Mr. Fairlie doesn’t have a CGT liability. Mr. Red has a CGT liability on his above inflation gain of £190,000. Ignoring future inflation and price rises, taper it in over 10 years, so that if he sells in 2026, Mr. Red would pay CGT on £19,000. If he sells in 2030, then he pays CGT on £95,000.
Alternatively, Rachel, just put a penny or two on Income Tax and stop faffing around the edges.
Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
OK, so the direct example I gave was a council. Who got lumbered with Adult Social Care but not the money to pay for Adult Social Care. You don't want to make a personal sacrifice in your living standards, just other people.
We get that. Why do you think the Tories got demolished in the election?
We don't need to cut welfare, we need to cut waste. The poorest in our society not only spend that money quickly, they do so locally. Cut their money, they spend less, local businesses go bust and more people are out of work.
Cut the waste. Welfare is an absurd mess with endless bureaucracy and petty assessments contracted out. Simplify to save. Same with Education or Health - stop tipping money onto the admin bonfire and buy a hosepipe.
Please stop projecting your views about others onto me.
I've been advocating:
Increasing income tax Increasing fuel duty Increasing council tax
All of these would affect me.
I've also been advocating:
Increasing the state retirement age Ending the triple lock Ending wfa
All of these would affect me assuming I live long enough.
Now if you want to cut waste and make public services more efficient then go ahead but it will be far harder to do in practice than to talk about it here.
And it still wont change the fundamental fact that this country has been living beyond its means for decades and that road is finally drawing to and end, so falls in living standards are going to happen.
If I am being judgemental then you have my apologies.
But there is a comparison. Paying more income tax. Fuel duty. Council tax. Annoying. A squeeze, but largely manageable for most people. You and I can likely cope.
Cutting welfare so tell people to "make some sacrifices" is largely unmanageable. If welfare was luxury largesse then maybe. Performative cuts on the poorest make their lives practically unliveable. Cuts to disability so that the disabled can't work, can't travel, can't get up. That is what "make some sacrifices" always means to the poorest and sickest.
All putting CGT on sales of properties will do is make owners reluctant to downsize, even if it is only applied to more expensive properties. That might be resolved if not made retrospective but would still hit buyers and the housing market and Labour prospects in London and home counties marginal seats
The country would be a better place if political decisions weren’t based on whether MPs would lose their marginal seats. I won’t hold my breath.
All putting CGT on sales of properties will do is make owners reluctant to downsize, even if it is only applied to more expensive properties. That might be resolved if not made retrospective but would still hit buyers and the housing market and Labour prospects in London and home counties marginal seats
Stamp duty already causes enough friction in the housing market, you can see this around the thresholds. What should be there instead is an annual low % asset/property tax but the transition needs to be carefully and gradually done otherwise it will be electoral suicide for whichever party introduces it.
I have absolutely no confidence that Reeves won't stamp hard on this 'rake', she's proving to be a terrible appointment.
Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone 50m I think the main reason Labour’s first year government has gone so badly is that they thought twiddling lightly with a few things would solve everything, instead of making some big plays. Ironically enough, they are failing for the same reason Sunak did.
Yes. October is Reeves's last chance to put herself among the great game changing epoch making chancellors. If she has any sense she will do so in her own reputatioanl interest, even if it loses the next election. IMO in fact it would increase Labour's chance of winning it.
Balance the books, tax the rich, under cover of this tax the middle too, reform property and pensioner taxation, explain the direction of travel and the dire outlook, cut expenditure, create some hope with a long term narrative outlook.
In a few months, 2026 arrives and we start saying 'Might be an election the year after next'. She needs to sort it in 2025.
Higher taxes of the rich and property owners. Lower spending on the old and poor. Increased productivity in the public sector People retiring later.
All together, no exceptions, everyone must feel some pain.
Time for honesty, no more denial.
None of that is addressing the issues. This isn't about not taxing or not spending. Taxes are at record levels. Spending on NHS England is at record levels. And yet despite that the actual healthcare delivered is starved of cash to crisis levels at the point of delivery.
We're burning the cash.
I don't think higher taxes is the answer - most of the rich will evade them We can't spend less on the old and poor - its already a pittance. Productivity is down because conditions are awful. We've managed to deliver both high reading attainment in English primary schools and a teaching profession exhausted and quitting because conditions are so bad. Want people to be more productive? Fix their working environment. People are already retiring later. They will retire sooner as AI takes jobs
You are fiddling around the edges. We need to address the structural failures in our economy - in short we stopped investing. The state doesn't invest so business doesn't invest.
A national program of renewal - borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment. Capitalism on stilts. Put the infrastructure in to allow business to thrive and it will. Make big business properly train and pay its staff in return for corporation tax cuts. Invest into construction so we can build houses for LHAs to bring housing costs down and free money to circulate through the economy. Invest in energy efficiency so we consume less and bring leccy prices down and with it the cost of everything we buy.
The big picture allows you to do the little stuff. Without the big picture we can't do the little stuff.
You're living in a fantasy world of being able to wave a magic wand to make everything more efficient and spending ourselves rich.
As to 'borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment', its even more fantasy world.
In the real world the return on many investments is negative.
And investing follows the law of diminishing marginal returns and rising costs.
What you're advocating is for people, businesses and government to borrow themselves to bankruptcy.
And its all irrelevant anyway unless you can convince the bond markets.
I don't see a great justification for exempting people's residential property from CGT. It would be brave to change this though. As the Header says, it's property and that's who we are.
Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone 50m I think the main reason Labour’s first year government has gone so badly is that they thought twiddling lightly with a few things would solve everything, instead of making some big plays. Ironically enough, they are failing for the same reason Sunak did.
Yes. October is Reeves's last chance to put herself among the great game changing epoch making chancellors. If she has any sense she will do so in her own reputatioanl interest, even if it loses the next election. IMO in fact it would increase Labour's chance of winning it.
Balance the books, tax the rich, under cover of this tax the middle too, reform property and pensioner taxation, explain the direction of travel and the dire outlook, cut expenditure, create some hope with a long term narrative outlook.
In a few months, 2026 arrives and we start saying 'Might be an election the year after next'. She needs to sort it in 2025.
Higher taxes of the rich and property owners. Lower spending on the old and poor. Increased productivity in the public sector People retiring later.
All together, no exceptions, everyone must feel some pain.
Time for honesty, no more denial.
None of that is addressing the issues. This isn't about not taxing or not spending. Taxes are at record levels. Spending on NHS England is at record levels. And yet despite that the actual healthcare delivered is starved of cash to crisis levels at the point of delivery.
We're burning the cash.
I don't think higher taxes is the answer - most of the rich will evade them We can't spend less on the old and poor - its already a pittance. Productivity is down because conditions are awful. We've managed to deliver both high reading attainment in English primary schools and a teaching profession exhausted and quitting because conditions are so bad. Want people to be more productive? Fix their working environment. People are already retiring later. They will retire sooner as AI takes jobs
You are fiddling around the edges. We need to address the structural failures in our economy - in short we stopped investing. The state doesn't invest so business doesn't invest.
A national program of renewal - borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment. Capitalism on stilts. Put the infrastructure in to allow business to thrive and it will. Make big business properly train and pay its staff in return for corporation tax cuts. Invest into construction so we can build houses for LHAs to bring housing costs down and free money to circulate through the economy. Invest in energy efficiency so we consume less and bring leccy prices down and with it the cost of everything we buy.
The big picture allows you to do the little stuff. Without the big picture we can't do the little stuff.
Companies can offset R&D costs against Corporation Tax liabilities. Extend it to training costs, including apprentices wages.
I don't see a great justification for exempting people's residential property from CGT. It would be brave to change this though. As the Header says, it's property and that's who we are.
If you levy it at point of sale then you’ve made it much harder for people to move for work once they’ve bought a house, which is clearly a net negative for the economy as a whole.
If you wanted to impose it without those bad effects you could roll it over till retirement or something I guess? Or death even - you could call it an inheritance tax...wait a minute...
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
OK, so the direct example I gave was a council. Who got lumbered with Adult Social Care but not the money to pay for Adult Social Care. You don't want to make a personal sacrifice in your living standards, just other people.
We get that. Why do you think the Tories got demolished in the election?
We don't need to cut welfare, we need to cut waste. The poorest in our society not only spend that money quickly, they do so locally. Cut their money, they spend less, local businesses go bust and more people are out of work.
Cut the waste. Welfare is an absurd mess with endless bureaucracy and petty assessments contracted out. Simplify to save. Same with Education or Health - stop tipping money onto the admin bonfire and buy a hosepipe.
Please stop projecting your views about others onto me.
I've been advocating:
Increasing income tax Increasing fuel duty Increasing council tax
All of these would affect me.
I've also been advocating:
Increasing the state retirement age Ending the triple lock Ending wfa
All of these would affect me assuming I live long enough.
Now if you want to cut waste and make public services more efficient then go ahead but it will be far harder to do in practice than to talk about it here.
And it still wont change the fundamental fact that this country has been living beyond its means for decades and that road is finally drawing to and end, so falls in living standards are going to happen.
If I am being judgemental then you have my apologies.
But there is a comparison. Paying more income tax. Fuel duty. Council tax. Annoying. A squeeze, but largely manageable for most people. You and I can likely cope.
Cutting welfare so tell people to "make some sacrifices" is largely unmanageable. If welfare was luxury largesse then maybe. Performative cuts on the poorest make their lives practically unliveable. Cuts to disability so that the disabled can't work, can't travel, can't get up. That is what "make some sacrifices" always means to the poorest and sickest.
Its psychological.
People are prepared to accept some hardship as long as they don't think they're losing out to others.
So "we're all in this together" needs to be more than a slogan.
And once you start exempting one group, others will want an exemption as well.
So the poor are exempted. And then the old. Followed by the disabled. And kids. Then the public sector. Or any other group politicians want to pander to.
With those left not being enough to bear all the burden or with options to opt out altogether by emigrating or stopping work.
Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone 50m I think the main reason Labour’s first year government has gone so badly is that they thought twiddling lightly with a few things would solve everything, instead of making some big plays. Ironically enough, they are failing for the same reason Sunak did.
Yes. October is Reeves's last chance to put herself among the great game changing epoch making chancellors. If she has any sense she will do so in her own reputatioanl interest, even if it loses the next election. IMO in fact it would increase Labour's chance of winning it.
Balance the books, tax the rich, under cover of this tax the middle too, reform property and pensioner taxation, explain the direction of travel and the dire outlook, cut expenditure, create some hope with a long term narrative outlook.
In a few months, 2026 arrives and we start saying 'Might be an election the year after next'. She needs to sort it in 2025.
Higher taxes of the rich and property owners. Lower spending on the old and poor. Increased productivity in the public sector People retiring later.
All together, no exceptions, everyone must feel some pain.
Time for honesty, no more denial.
None of that is addressing the issues. This isn't about not taxing or not spending. Taxes are at record levels. Spending on NHS England is at record levels. And yet despite that the actual healthcare delivered is starved of cash to crisis levels at the point of delivery.
We're burning the cash.
I don't think higher taxes is the answer - most of the rich will evade them We can't spend less on the old and poor - its already a pittance. Productivity is down because conditions are awful. We've managed to deliver both high reading attainment in English primary schools and a teaching profession exhausted and quitting because conditions are so bad. Want people to be more productive? Fix their working environment. People are already retiring later. They will retire sooner as AI takes jobs
You are fiddling around the edges. We need to address the structural failures in our economy - in short we stopped investing. The state doesn't invest so business doesn't invest.
A national program of renewal - borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment. Capitalism on stilts. Put the infrastructure in to allow business to thrive and it will. Make big business properly train and pay its staff in return for corporation tax cuts. Invest into construction so we can build houses for LHAs to bring housing costs down and free money to circulate through the economy. Invest in energy efficiency so we consume less and bring leccy prices down and with it the cost of everything we buy.
The big picture allows you to do the little stuff. Without the big picture we can't do the little stuff.
You're living in a fantasy world of being able to wave a magic wand to make everything more efficient and spending ourselves rich.
As to 'borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment', its even more fantasy world.
In the real world the return on many investments is negative.
And investing follows the law of diminishing marginal returns and rising costs.
What you're advocating is for people, businesses and government to borrow themselves to bankruptcy.
And its all irrelevant anyway unless you can convince the bond markets.
We can persuade the bond markets. A long list of projects that deliver positive ROI. The ones done by the French and the Dutch and the Germans and the Spanish and everyone else bar us.
Bond markets don't like governments spraying cash around with no plan. They like big investment projects and there's an awful lot of cash out there looking for something to invest in.
As for the rest, you may have given up on capitalism but I haven't. You also used the word "spending" to replace "investing". This is Thatcherism's legacy - investment is "spending".
Family in fear after Tommy Robinson shares video of black man with white granddaughters
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/family-in-fear-after-tommy-robinson-shares-video-of-black-man-with-white-granddaughters ..Ayeni and his wife have been scared to leave their house because of threats. “We haven’t gone outside at home, we just can’t,” Natalie said. “Just after it started to go viral, someone in the local pub recognised Olajuwon immediately; we couldn’t believe how quick it had spread. We were walking home from shops just streets from our house, and two lads passed us, spun round and said ‘I hope you’re not them off that video or we’re coming back to slash you up’. It’s just horrendous.
“Someone was shouting ‘paedophile’ outside the house the other night, so I rang the police again but they say there’s little they can do. It feels a matter of time before something bad happens. We tried to go out yesterday and had to come home.”
The impact on Ayeni has been particularly severe. “I feel I have to sleep with one eye open,” he said. “I feel unsafe, scared and sad, as mine and my brother’s lives have been threatened. Someone said they will seek revenge and I’ll never walk again, all for just being in the park with the kids I love on a family day out...
For me the more concerning aspect is that idiots believe it, and comply:
Olajuwon Ayeni, a musician from Redcar, North Yorkshire, has been racially abused and falsely labelled a paedophile in the week since the family video was stolen from the TikTok account of his wife, Natalie, who he married five years ago, and shared by extremists online.
On Tuesday, the couple’s local MP, Anna Turley, was forced to write a letter providing a reference of good character for Ayeni when he was suspended by his management after the online disinformation.
We are back to the late 1990s "target your local alleged paedophile" campaigns, wound up by tabloids. I won't mention names, but the editors responsible do not seem to have suffered.
I wonder if they will move on to gays and other minorities, as Trump and Co have in the USA with their obsessions around whites, traditional marriage, race-based policing, and purging the state?
Are we possibly going to need end-of-segregation-era style political activism to resist this?
These stories are generally a good thing. They expose the Farages and the Jenricks for what they are. I read somewhere that to this day the Pausgrove estate haven't recovered from their infamous attack on the paediatrician.
When the mob are made to look ridiculous they're most likely to turn their pitchforks on their leaders
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
The conversation about the British empire below was interesting, and held varied views. Some pro, some anti, some mixed. All thoughtful.
Then two posters come along with posts with zero content, just "You disagree with me, you stoopid!"
Do you really need the absurdity of some of these "thoughtful" posts spelt out for you?
By all means, give your contrary arguments.
I think it's impossible to answer a question like 'would the world be worse off if the British Empire had never existed?'
But I'll give a you couple of examples.
Firstly, you missed the point I was attempting to indicate: Some of the arguments for why the British Empire was a good thing sound very similar to arguments other people make for why their empires were/are a good thing. For example, have a look at Chinese arguments for why their occupation of Tibet is a good thing. Or read the fascinating texts written by German historians and academics in the 1920s arguing that the former German colonies in Africa were run much better than all other European colonies in Africa, and they should be given back to Germany.
Of course, some of the arguments people make for why their own empire was/is good can have some truth in them. But I always think it's a bit of a coincidence when people think own empires undoubtedly a great blessing for humanity, while finding all the other empires abhorrent. Of course I can understand people feeling this way - I didn't argue with my 10-year-old son the other day when he told me that I am 'the best dad in the world'.
Then you've got things like people saying 'you can't judge the British Empire by the standards of today', and in literally the next sentence inviting us to compare the British Empire favourably with the Mongol Empire. Just to spell this out for you: Time between today and the heyday of the British Empire - about a century or so Time between the heyday of the British Empire and the heyday of the Mongol Empire - about 7 centuries
Or there are claims like this: "The Empire invariably improved the constitutional and economic conditions wherever it settled"
As for the argument that the British Empire was definitely a good thing because the Belgian Empire was terrible - I'm hoping this was posted as a joke.
That is, of course, entirely natural.
Even avowed anti-imperialists/ post-colonialists tend to prioritise between empires. Their own ancestors were bearers of civilisation and culture, whereas yours were savage brutes.
Turks admire Mehmet II and Suleiman the Magnificent; Iranians admire Shah Abbas and Nadir Shah; Sikhs admire Ranjit Singh; the Chinese admire their mighty Emperors; Arabs admire the Rashidun Caliphate; Mongols and Central Asians admire Genghis Khan, and so on.
This attitude is less unhealthy for a nation than beating themselves up over their ancestors' misdeeds. It becomes problematic only when it's used to justify irredentist claims on territory - which is the outlook of modern Russia, a mix of triumphalism and self-pity.
Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
The problem is that this leads to “We must spend more on everything, all the time” thinking and belief.
In any sane organisation there needs to be cost control.
I’ve actually worked in an organisation that abandoned cost control. The result was actually worse - a pile of parasites transferred in to spend money. On themselves, literally, in a number of cases.
What is needed is a joined up approach to current spending and investment and what those actually mean.
I actually asked the local council about their taxi SEND policy. After ages someone finally admitted that one of the taxi firms had actually asked them if they could use a minibus - drivers at schools times are at a premium. But apparently this would require a professional risk assessment, then a whole safety case would need writing up. No money…
Yup. We can't afford £150 to do the paperwork. But we can overspend the school transport budget by £750 as that is flexible, so lets do that. We spend more because we can't afford to spend the little bit to save the big bit.
This is the mentality of Britain.
It’s also the gold plating. The taxi firm does bus stuff for schools - vehicles all up to spec for children. One service they do is bussing for private schools. They also do school trips for both state and private schools. The drivers have all the checks etc.
But we can’t do something new without a report!!!!! Must Have Report…
I don't see a great justification for exempting people's residential property from CGT. It would be brave to change this though. As the Header says, it's property and that's who we are.
If you levy it at point of sale then you’ve made it much harder for people to move for work once they’ve bought a house, which is clearly a net negative for the economy as a whole.
If you wanted to impose it without those bad effects you could roll it over till retirement or something I guess? Or death even - you could call it an inheritance tax...wait a minute...
You'd need some sort rollover of rollover relief, I guess. But, yes, maybe this tax break is one of those things that you wouldn't introduce but now it's so established and accepted it'd be very disruptive to remove.
It'd have a certain logic though. Taxing gains accords with our mindset that property is more an investment than a place to live. This is one of the factors contributing to our rather messed-up housing market.
TL/DR; Sally Rooney has pledged UK royalties to Palestine Action so it is arguably illegal (with a 14-year prison sentence) to buy Normal People since you are funding a proscribed terrorist organisation.
Good for Sally Rooney! Anything that hastens the end of Mrs Balls Ministerial career is OK with me.
So Roger - do you support Palestine Action or are you just complaining about free speech?
But she needs the money and has made a lot of silly promises.
Cut spending. £50bn out of the budget from payrolls, international aid and other welfare. Get the IMF in as cover to implement it if necessary.
If you’re cutting welfare and entitlements, there’s one very obvious pot of gold where you can start: pensions.
What would be your plan on pensions? Yes, we can remove the Triple Lock but presumably you are looking at raising the age when th state pension is paid - to what. 70, 75?
We discussed yesterday the area of care and the role of carers and I mentioned the role of unpaid carers. If you remove or reduce pensions, that simply means more people in the care system with little or nothing so the State ends up supporting them.
My wife and I are 75 and in fairly good health, and know numerous people of similar age with just minor ailments, which clearly wasn't the case 40 years ago (one crucial improvement that barely gets mentioned). Clearly that's not always the case, but arguably the pension should be means-tested. It'd be difficult to do that in retrospect as pension contributions were labelled as savings., but for most people, the crucial question is whether they go into prolonged care towards the end. If they do (10% of all pensioners, I saw somewhere), then many savings are wiped out. If they don't, then a large chunk goes to the next generation, extending wealth disparity for no obvious society benefit, much though individuals like it. Subsidising care and removing the tax-exempt sum might be a fair balance which would target people who need it.
Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
The problem is that this leads to “We must spend more on everything, all the time” thinking and belief.
In any sane organisation there needs to be cost control.
I’ve actually worked in an organisation that abandoned cost control. The result was actually worse - a pile of parasites transferred in to spend money. On themselves, literally, in a number of cases.
What is needed is a joined up approach to current spending and investment and what those actually mean.
I actually asked the local council about their taxi SEND policy. After ages someone finally admitted that one of the taxi firms had actually asked them if they could use a minibus - drivers at schools times are at a premium. But apparently this would require a professional risk assessment, then a whole safety case would need writing up. No money…
That's a decent example of what's probably a general problem.
There is an enormous industry of H&S; environmental; planning etc risk assessors and box tickers, which makes doing anything with any element of contact with the public immensely onerous, expensive, and slow.
Clearly there are tradeoffs in all the areas that regulation touches, but I suspect very few people would argue we've got the balance right in any given area they have direct experience of.
A local farmer reports that haylage yield is fine, but hay is down ~ 40%. Grass pasture is very poor for the time of year. Going to mean (yet more) increases in food prices going into winter & autumn.
You could draw a line across the country from around Chester to Newcastle, everything south of that has had some form of drought conditions impacting on crops this year. I'd be surprised if it didn't reflect on prices on the shelves
A few farms reporting early harvest up here due to dry conditions, crops ripening much earlier. yield may be down where crop growth has been stunted
It has largely been superb weather for at first haymaking and then for combining grain. It shouldn't require much if any additional cost of drying.
A local farmer reports that haylage yield is fine, but hay is down ~ 40%. Grass pasture is very poor for the time of year. Going to mean (yet more) increases in food prices going into winter & autumn.
You could draw a line across the country from around Chester to Newcastle, everything south of that has had some form of drought conditions impacting on crops this year. I'd be surprised if it didn't reflect on prices on the shelves
A few farms reporting early harvest up here due to dry conditions, crops ripening much earlier. yield may be down where crop growth has been stunted
I don't remember as dry a summer as we have had in Wiltshire, and add in the heat (four heat waves) and things are unbelievably dry out there. It will recover in September when the rains return, but it will be a poor harvest down south.
A local farmer reports that haylage yield is fine, but hay is down ~ 40%. Grass pasture is very poor for the time of year. Going to mean (yet more) increases in food prices going into winter & autumn.
You could draw a line across the country from around Chester to Newcastle, everything south of that has had some form of drought conditions impacting on crops this year. I'd be surprised if it didn't reflect on prices on the shelves
A few farms reporting early harvest up here due to dry conditions, crops ripening much earlier. yield may be down where crop growth has been stunted
It has largely been superb weather for at first haymaking and then for combining grain. It shouldn't require much if any additional cost of drying.
But I suspect the grain yields will be poor - not enough water at the right time.
According to dieworkwear a blazer is a jacket with metal buttons usually used or associated with an uniform
When I was a smack addict living in Bangkok in a hotel that did heroin on room service, my main item of attire (with shorts) was a second hand RAF blazer with all the trimmings. I was quite conspicuous amongst the hippy gap year “pyjama people”
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
I’d have said the same about any political party leader who came out to bat for people arrested for supporting a proscribed terrorist group.
In the past I worked with many people of Irish heritage in Brum, none of whom supported the IRA. There are plenty of other vehicles to support opposition to what is going on in Gaza.
I like Nigel, he is always interesting, I’ve no beef with him at all but he does have his obsessions as well. One being Kamala during the US elections
Certainly one of the least deft political operators to inhabit the role in recent times.
She cannot sell an economic vision or plan because she doesn’t have one. It’s rather painful to watch this all unfold in slow motion. At least Kwarteng was gone quickly.
No-one in this government appears to have any concrete 'vision'. At best, any vision is a nebulous cloud that varies from minister to minister.
And it is led by someone who cannot sell a vision if they had one.
(I might tentatively suggest that that is the problem: Starmer cannot sell the vision they have. But I see no other ministers trying, either, so I fear they don't have one.)
The killer point. We don't know where we're going - and we haven't done since Boris was removed. Boris had vision - no plan to actually deliver it, but the vision was clearly there.
As usual with policy, neat slogans to sell helps. And I honestly think the one Labour should adopt is Build Back Better. An awful lot of people wistfully looking to the past. A huge amount of stuff needed. A society - cultural and infrastructure - needing improvements.
Boris the great showman rightly identified this and had the pithy slogan, just without the policies. Starmer lacks the vision but gives the impression of being a technocrat. So come up with the polices to actually do it.
IMV Boris did have a plan. As with all plans, it was flawed, and may (or would) not have worked. Covid struck within a few months of his getting his stonking majority, and any plans he had were utterly derailed.
What we really need is a PM with Boris' vision and ability to sell things to the electorate; Starmer's technocracy, and someone else's (May's ?) morality.
I agree with most of the rest of your post.
Boris *sold* a plan, but it wasn't real. He got desperate councils to bid for BBB funding. Which cost them money they didn't have. To apply for money that largely didn't exist.
Everyone can point to general decay and rot. On local streets, in their communities, in town centres. In the tatty schools and hospitals and public buildings. Maintenance budgets cut because "we can't afford it" which creates more mess and a bigger bill than the cut. Water and electricity infrastructure not invested in for foreign owner profits hence running out of water and Heathrow's substation burning down.
We need to spend money to save money. Every pound we save fixing things up saves more than a pound fixing the mess caused by not fixing them. Of making commercial centres buzz again. Of making people proud of their community again. Will have to spend more in the short term to save in the medium to long term. Better to do that than to keep throwing more money onto the bonfire to only get ashes.
THAT is the vision thing.
When I spend on long term maintenance and capital improvement I modify my current spending to balance it.
How much is the government and people of this country willing to reduce their current spending for long term benefit.
Reducing crisis management *is* reducing current spending.
Accounting rules in local government do stupid things. Maintaining drains costs money, so the budget is cut and the money is saved. Huzzah!
But a blocked drain creates a flood which means the council need to spend money in year to clean up - including clearing the drain.
The current spending they need to save to pay to maintain the drains is the money spent clearing up the mess not maintaining the drains. But as the budget needs to balance - and crisis spending isn't firmly costed as its by exception - we end up paying more and getting less.
Don't you get it? We can't afford not to maintain drains and roads and other things. Today the schools have gone back, and Fraserburgh North primary school has the heating jammed on full 24/7. We can't afford to repair the heating because the school is due to be replaced, but we can't afford to replace the school either.
But in-year heating? If it runs over budget then what can you do. So the heating stays on. And students and teachers get sick. Which means high cost supply teachers.
You think cuts save money? No, they cost money.
Cut spending on welfare to invest in maintenance and capital improvements.
That requires a government big enough to tell people that they need to make some sacrifices in living standards for medium term gains in quality of life.
And a people big enough to accept it.
If though you want to increase spending on maintenance and capital improvements without cutting welfare spending then you need to convince the bond markets not me.
The problem is that this leads to “We must spend more on everything, all the time” thinking and belief.
In any sane organisation there needs to be cost control.
I’ve actually worked in an organisation that abandoned cost control. The result was actually worse - a pile of parasites transferred in to spend money. On themselves, literally, in a number of cases.
What is needed is a joined up approach to current spending and investment and what those actually mean.
I actually asked the local council about their taxi SEND policy. After ages someone finally admitted that one of the taxi firms had actually asked them if they could use a minibus - drivers at schools times are at a premium. But apparently this would require a professional risk assessment, then a whole safety case would need writing up. No money…
That's a decent example of what's probably a general problem.
There is an enormous industry of H&S; environmental; planning etc risk assessors and box tickers, which makes doing anything with any element of contact with the public immensely onerous, expensive, and slow.
Clearly there are tradeoffs in all the areas that regulation touches, but I suspect very few people would argue we've got the balance right in any given area they have direct experience of.
The problem is performative bullshit paperwork.
Grenfell had metric tons of paper saying it was the bestest building in the whole world.
I would bet that no one actually checks that the driver of the taxi/bus has a CRB check. Or that the actual physical vehicle isn’t actually on fire.
But there will be hundreds of pages about people saying that these things are importantly, that they should be checked, that they would be checked etc.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
My friend is currently having 20 panels and a battery storage installed. He reckons most of the time he will be independent of the grid, but will be connected and exporting the excess. He is projected to recoup the costs in 6 years. I know not every building will be fully suitable for this, but shouldn't this be the way ahead? Every new property (where possible) going down this route, even if with fewer panels.
A local farmer reports that haylage yield is fine, but hay is down ~ 40%. Grass pasture is very poor for the time of year. Going to mean (yet more) increases in food prices going into winter & autumn.
You could draw a line across the country from around Chester to Newcastle, everything south of that has had some form of drought conditions impacting on crops this year. I'd be surprised if it didn't reflect on prices on the shelves
A few farms reporting early harvest up here due to dry conditions, crops ripening much earlier. yield may be down where crop growth has been stunted
I don't remember as dry a summer as we have had in Wiltshire, and add in the heat (four heat waves) and things are unbelievably dry out there. It will recover in September when the rains return, but it will be a poor harvest down south.
Reckon I've got 10 trees dead from drought stress on my back 5 hectares. I'll have to "Sycamore Gap" them before winter gets here.
But she needs the money and has made a lot of silly promises.
Cut spending. £50bn out of the budget from payrolls, international aid and other welfare. Get the IMF in as cover to implement it if necessary.
If you’re cutting welfare and entitlements, there’s one very obvious pot of gold where you can start: pensions.
What would be your plan on pensions? Yes, we can remove the Triple Lock but presumably you are looking at raising the age when th state pension is paid - to what. 70, 75?
We discussed yesterday the area of care and the role of carers and I mentioned the role of unpaid carers. If you remove or reduce pensions, that simply means more people in the care system with little or nothing so the State ends up supporting them.
My wife and I are 75 and in fairly good health, and know numerous people of similar age with just minor ailments, which clearly wasn't the case 40 years ago (one crucial improvement that barely gets mentioned). Clearly that's not always the case, but arguably the pension should be means-tested. It'd be difficult to do that in retrospect as pension contributions were labelled as savings., but for most people, the crucial question is whether they go into prolonged care towards the end. If they do (10% of all pensioners, I saw somewhere), then many savings are wiped out. If they don't, then a large chunk goes to the next generation, extending wealth disparity for no obvious society benefit, much though individuals like it. Subsidising care and removing the tax-exempt sum might be a fair balance which would target people who need it.
I really think for future generations we should be looking to do something to set them up with individual pots. New borns should have 5 grand deposited in a low cost global tracker on birth, or spread over a few years to DCA, and when they hit 67 they can use that pot as their pension. Compounding should have done its work.
Part of the problem with child trust funds was, it was a great idea badly managed, and many companies offering them simply rinsed the fund with charges.
That would need to be avoided. Something like Vanguards VWRD would be ideal.
Communism when Jeremy Corbyn's Labour proposed the same thing. In America, it's investment.
They’ve got a point, when there’s tens of billions from various State and Federal schemes aimed at rural broadband, yet very few people appear to have been actually connected, the money mostly disappearing in the supply chain of politically-connected companies. Starlink delivers rural broadband for a fraction of the cost and the infrastructure is already in place.
Now there’s an argument to have about one company having a monopoly on satellite broadband, but they’ve built the network entirely with private funds.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
I’d have said the same about any political party leader who came out to bat for people arrested for supporting a proscribed terrorist group.
In the past I worked with many people of Irish heritage in Brum, none of whom supported the IRA. There are plenty of other vehicles to support opposition to what is going on in Gaza.
I like Nigel, he is always interesting, I’ve no beef with him at all but he does have his obsessions as well. One being Kamala during the US elections
I gave that a like, despite your mischaracterising what Davey was actually saying.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I normally find him a bit crusty / stuck a bit in former times, but here some interesting insights especially on how he thinks both Sunak and Starmer have failed to engage with the reality of hybrid war in the UK. 35 mnutes - so quite long. I found the 2nd half more interesting.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
Communism when Jeremy Corbyn's Labour proposed the same thing. In America, it's investment.
They’ve got a point, when there’s tens of billions from various State and Federal schemes aimed at rural broadband, yet very few people appear to have been actually connected, the money mostly disappearing in the supply chain of politically-connected companies. Starlink delivers rural broadband for a fraction of the cost and the infrastructure is already in place.
Now there’s an argument to have about one company having a monopoly on satellite broadband, but they’ve built the network entirely with private funds.
It seems odd to talk about "politically-connected companies" without also describing Starlink as politically-connected. Indeed, it is one of the most politically-connected companies around.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
My friend is currently having 20 panels and a battery storage installed. He reckons most of the time he will be independent of the grid, but will be connected and exporting the excess. He is projected to recoup the costs in 6 years. I know not every building will be fully suitable for this, but shouldn't this be the way ahead? Every new property (where possible) going down this route, even if with fewer panels.
That's a rebalanced version of the traditional view of "treat the grid as a seasonal battery" in your aim for zero emissions electricity. The issue was always the cost of import vs the revenue of export disparity.
Times and balance have changed over the last 6 or 7 years.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
A few years ago HYUFD and his sweetheart got married. She is expecting a child. Estimated birth date is November. It's the first for both of them.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
Well I wasn’t wrong about Krakow. A lovely city, but has got very expensive in the last few years. £4 a pint definitely a lot steeper than expected, although we were around the historic old town square.
A wonderful dinner was had in the award-winning Szara Ges restaurant, definitely recommended and half the price of similar restaurants in London. https://szarages.com/
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
I’d have said the same about any political party leader who came out to bat for people arrested for supporting a proscribed terrorist group.
In the past I worked with many people of Irish heritage in Brum, none of whom supported the IRA. There are plenty of other vehicles to support opposition to what is going on in Gaza.
I like Nigel, he is always interesting, I’ve no beef with him at all but he does have his obsessions as well. One being Kamala during the US elections
I gave that a like, despite your mischaracterising what Davey was actually saying.
I probably wasn’t clear then as that was not what I intended it to read like, but I clarified what I meant further in the thread.
A local farmer reports that haylage yield is fine, but hay is down ~ 40%. Grass pasture is very poor for the time of year. Going to mean (yet more) increases in food prices going into winter & autumn.
You could draw a line across the country from around Chester to Newcastle, everything south of that has had some form of drought conditions impacting on crops this year. I'd be surprised if it didn't reflect on prices on the shelves
A few farms reporting early harvest up here due to dry conditions, crops ripening much earlier. yield may be down where crop growth has been stunted
I don't remember as dry a summer as we have had in Wiltshire, and add in the heat (four heat waves) and things are unbelievably dry out there. It will recover in September when the rains return, but it will be a poor harvest down south.
Reckon I've got 10 trees dead from drought stress on my back 5 hectares. I'll have to "Sycamore Gap" them before winter gets here.
Please tell me you intend to do it at midnight in a storm for authenticity...
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
The conversation about the British empire below was interesting, and held varied views. Some pro, some anti, some mixed. All thoughtful.
Then two posters come along with posts with zero content, just "You disagree with me, you stoopid!"
Do you really need the absurdity of some of these "thoughtful" posts spelt out for you?
By all means, give your contrary arguments.
I think it's impossible to answer a question like 'would the world be worse off if the British Empire had never existed?'
But I'll give a you couple of examples.
Firstly, you missed the point I was attempting to indicate: Some of the arguments for why the British Empire was a good thing sound very similar to arguments other people make for why their empires were/are a good thing. For example, have a look at Chinese arguments for why their occupation of Tibet is a good thing. Or read the fascinating texts written by German historians and academics in the 1920s arguing that the former German colonies in Africa were run much better than all other European colonies in Africa, and they should be given back to Germany.
Of course, some of the arguments people make for why their own empire was/is good can have some truth in them. But I always think it's a bit of a coincidence when people think own empires undoubtedly a great blessing for humanity, while finding all the other empires abhorrent. Of course I can understand people feeling this way - I didn't argue with my 10-year-old son the other day when he told me that I am 'the best dad in the world'.
Then you've got things like people saying 'you can't judge the British Empire by the standards of today', and in literally the next sentence inviting us to compare the British Empire favourably with the Mongol Empire. Just to spell this out for you: Time between today and the heyday of the British Empire - about a century or so Time between the heyday of the British Empire and the heyday of the Mongol Empire - about 7 centuries
Or there are claims like this: "The Empire invariably improved the constitutional and economic conditions wherever it settled"
As for the argument that the British Empire was definitely a good thing because the Belgian Empire was terrible - I'm hoping this was posted as a joke.
It is such a load of bollox anyway, similar to "if your granny had balls would she have been your grandad", absolute tripe.
My friend is currently having 20 panels and a battery storage installed. He reckons most of the time he will be independent of the grid, but will be connected and exporting the excess. He is projected to recoup the costs in 6 years. I know not every building will be fully suitable for this, but shouldn't this be the way ahead? Every new property (where possible) going down this route, even if with fewer panels.
That's a rebalanced version of the traditional view of "treat the grid as a seasonal battery" in your aim for zero emissions electricity. The issue was always the cost of import vs the revenue of export disparity.
Times and balance have changed over the last 6 or 7 years.
For many domestic properties, the number of panels you can get on the roof is small. Working at height is expensive.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
A long time ago, I was a member of a chat room (I was 18). When I asked others to guess my age the most common response was 30-40, a few thought 50-60, and one older than that.
As we all know, morris dancers are known for our maturity and seemingly timeless wisdom.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
He was supporting the right to protest.
And yes, saying that criminalising a bunch of middle class protestors for doing not very much (and they certainly weren't supporting "terrorism"), by using the act in this manner, is pretty well exactly the qualification he expressed.
This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.
The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":
Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.
At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".
"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.
During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.
"It's not fair on taxpayers."
Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?
But she needs the money and has made a lot of silly promises.
Cut spending. £50bn out of the budget from payrolls, international aid and other welfare. Get the IMF in as cover to implement it if necessary.
If you’re cutting welfare and entitlements, there’s one very obvious pot of gold where you can start: pensions.
Stop triple lock Stop pension credits Stop wfa Reform public sector pensions Increase retirement age
All need to be done.
You forgot some far more pertinent ones Cut Benefits Tax all benefits like all other income is taxed
Aren't benefits already taxable income? Edit: Oh, okay, it's a mess, State Pension is, but Pension Credit isn't, Job Seekers Allowance is but Universal Credit isn't, Carer's Allowance is but Guardian's Allowance isn't. Child Benefit isn't unless you earn £50k+ then it is. Do they toss a coin whenever a new benefit comes in?
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
Yes I just congratted blind taking the slight risk that what H announced was a move from the Conservatives to Reform.
Meanwhile in Russia: Vladimir Solovyov found himself in hot water, having just found out that the Ukrainian delegation handed Trump a list of his quotes deriding the U.S. president (my channel is replete with them). Solovyov says he was always for Trump. https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1957911495762907477
Communism when Jeremy Corbyn's Labour proposed the same thing. In America, it's investment.
They’ve got a point, when there’s tens of billions from various State and Federal schemes aimed at rural broadband, yet very few people appear to have been actually connected, the money mostly disappearing in the supply chain of politically-connected companies. Starlink delivers rural broadband for a fraction of the cost and the infrastructure is already in place.
Now there’s an argument to have about one company having a monopoly on satellite broadband, but they’ve built the network entirely with private funds.
It seems odd to talk about "politically-connected companies" without also describing Starlink as politically-connected. Indeed, it is one of the most politically-connected companies around.
The difference being that Starlink has already funded privately their network and has a working product they’re trying to sell, whereas the rural broadband money appears to have mostly disappeared without actually providing any rural broadband.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
Protesting about Palestine isn't banned. Nor is protesting about the application of terrorist laws to Palestine action isn't banned. Supporting Palestine action is currently illegal. All those arrested are either idiots or doing it deliberately to get arrested to make a point.
Private residence relief is one of those sacred cows that should have been slaughtered decades ago, but never will be because of the horror voters would show at the mere suggestion.
It's a bit like the triple lock, only worse. Doesn't matter how hard it is to justify, you can't even talk about removing it.
Are you more worried about the country estate, or the pied-à-terre 'in town' ?
Scott, dear boy, you of all people should know thaat I am not in the least concerned about any threat to my own luxurious lifestylle. I am simply concerned about people like you and the the peasantry generally. The memsahib and I will be just fine whatever, dontcha know.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
He was supporting the right to protest.
And yes, saying that criminalising a bunch of middle class protestors for doing not very much (and they certainly weren't supporting "terrorism"), by using the act in this manner, is pretty well exactly the qualification he expressed.
I think Taz should have qualified his post more like.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
People are not being arrested for excercising their freedom of speech.
They’re being arrested for supporting, openly supporting, a proscribed terrorist group. That’s not wrong and as to their innocence or otherwise that’s for a court to decide.
The odd case where an innocent person has been arrested, like the Plasticene action guy, then clearly that’s fine.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
Expecting a happy event in November 👍
Kemi given the boot and Mel Stride elected leader on a wave of one nation enthusiasm?
In any case congrats HYUFD on the actual happy event.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
He was supporting the right to protest.
And yes, saying that criminalising a bunch of middle class protestors for doing not very much (and they certainly weren't supporting "terrorism"), by using the act in this manner, is pretty well exactly the qualification he expressed.
I think Taz should have qualified his post more like.
(2024 lecky demand was 319.0 TWh, so it looks like solar will do ~7% this year, given it is not all metered.)
Some 14.08 terawatt hours of electricity was produced from solar in Great Britain by August 16, about one-third higher than at this time last year, a Financial Times analysis of University of Sheffield data has found. This is enough to power 5.2mn homes for a year, or the London Underground for more than a decade.
The figures underline the momentum of Britain’s clean energy push, but also highlight the need for the grid to be able to cope with more variable power sources. ... Neso is also overhauling the grid connection process in an effort to prioritise clean power schemes and remove “zombie” projects with little hope of ever being built. The move came after the developers of some proposed solar schemes had been told they would not be connected to the grid until the late 2030s. Neso said the change would “allow us to connect clean energy projects more quickly, creating a better environment for private investment”.
Investment by developers has nonetheless resulted in a big increase in solar plants over the past five years, government data shows. Of the 18.1GW of solar capacity online in the UK as of the end of March, more than 12.4GW was supported by some government subsidies and 5.6GW was not.
Industry says the total capacity is higher than official government figures, at about 22GW. In addition, since December 2021, solar developers have won government support deals — know as contracts for difference — covering about 7GW of new projects that are still being built. Long-term deals to supply specific big electricity customers are also becoming important sources of funding.
But she needs the money and has made a lot of silly promises.
Cut spending. £50bn out of the budget from payrolls, international aid and other welfare. Get the IMF in as cover to implement it if necessary.
If you’re cutting welfare and entitlements, there’s one very obvious pot of gold where you can start: pensions.
What would be your plan on pensions? Yes, we can remove the Triple Lock but presumably you are looking at raising the age when th state pension is paid - to what. 70, 75?
We discussed yesterday the area of care and the role of carers and I mentioned the role of unpaid carers. If you remove or reduce pensions, that simply means more people in the care system with little or nothing so the State ends up supporting them.
My wife and I are 75 and in fairly good health, and know numerous people of similar age with just minor ailments, which clearly wasn't the case 40 years ago (one crucial improvement that barely gets mentioned). Clearly that's not always the case, but arguably the pension should be means-tested. It'd be difficult to do that in retrospect as pension contributions were labelled as savings., but for most people, the crucial question is whether they go into prolonged care towards the end. If they do (10% of all pensioners, I saw somewhere), then many savings are wiped out. If they don't, then a large chunk goes to the next generation, extending wealth disparity for no obvious society benefit, much though individuals like it. Subsidising care and removing the tax-exempt sum might be a fair balance which would target people who need it.
I had very different experiences with my parents. My mother died of colon cancer at the age of 70 - her last year wasn't nice. My Dad took care of her at home which couldn't have been easy. As for him, he was hale and hearty until 88 - would meet his friends every Friday for lunch (he was a big fan of bream if done properly) but deteriorated very quickly after a fall such that the only option was residential care for which he had planned and was in a very nice home within a few weeks. Unfortunately, he was gone within the year.
Had he gone into residential care at 85, he'd have enjoyed three years of a very nice life (if not longer) but he steadsfastly refused to leave the bungalow ("this is my home and I want to stay here"). until the fall. Financially, the short duration of his stay worked out well for me and my brother and we both got a small inheritance which helped.
That's the thing - you need systems and processes which are flexible as everyone is different, their expectations and aspirations are different. We need a quality fo residential care where I think we fall short currently (but if you bring the profit motive into it, as with everything else, it becomes about the cost of everything and the value of nothing).
We probably need to rethink our relationship with ageing and death.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
Expecting a happy event in November 👍
Kemi given the boot and Mel Stride elected leader on a wave of one nation enthusiasm?
In any case congrats HYUFD on the actual happy event.
Is Mel Stride still One Nation?
I think he's pivoted towards Jenrick / Philp. He was 2nd in the last Con Home poll, and they are hardly what is left of the One Nation wing.
Private residence relief is one of those sacred cows that should have been slaughtered decades ago, but never will be because of the horror voters would show at the mere suggestion.
It's a bit like the triple lock, only worse. Doesn't matter how hard it is to justify, you can't even talk about removing it.
It drives inequality across generations and indeed postcodes. It is a massive tax free bonus for the haves at the cost of the have nots. It makes getting their own house even more difficult for the younger generation. It encourages us to invest in housing rather than factories or businesses. It is an unbelievably stupid policy. But then, so is the triple lock.
It was introduced by MacMillan, I believe, not as an economic measure but to undermine socialism by bringing greater numbers into property ownershiip.
» show previous quotes I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
In fairness to @Nigelb it is an odd obsession. I have commented on it several times. It is regular and completely out of the blue and usually out of context and random.
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Note my "FWIW".
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited. FWIW.
No, I was not saying he supports Palestine Action, I don’t think that at all, I was saying he supports people who say they support them.
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
I thought he did qualify what he said. I quote: "Palestine Action has committed criminal acts and need to be prosecuted for them. They are a very worrying organisation. What we and many others found troubling was that innocent people exercising their freedom of speech and right to protest in a peaceful way in Parliament Square were arrested en masse. [...] Anyone who believes in the traditional British values of freedom of speech and the right to peaceful protest should be very worried and I hope will get behind the Liberal Democrat call."
Protesting about Palestine isn't banned. Nor is protesting about the application of terrorist laws to Palestine action isn't banned. Supporting Palestine action is currently illegal. All those arrested are either idiots or doing it deliberately to get arrested to make a point.
It’s the old thing, like was done with Exctinction rebellion and Just Stop Oil. Peaceful protest is not necessarily legal protest.
The fact he says they’re innocent makes me question his judgement when, as you say, some have clearly set out to be arrested.
This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.
The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":
Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.
At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".
"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.
During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.
"It's not fair on taxpayers."
Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?
Because there are a lot of selfish nasty shits out there with a vote, and Reform want to be their best mates.
+1
(Good ev channel btw. I dont have a tesla though)
Thanks! I'm also working on branching out: Launched a politics show with an old mate called "Emergency Podcast". A few false starts, but we're now into a flow with reels being clipped which are doing well. I'm then dumping those reels onto TikTok which is also gaining traction. I've then done a couple of test reels of me solo doing politics. Trying to get a feel for how / what to produce to go out on all platforms for my coming Holyrood run Our toys business ("Milibricks") has a few test reels on YT/TT which are starting to get views - just gone through 1k on YT
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.
The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":
Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.
At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".
"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.
During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.
"It's not fair on taxpayers."
Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?
Because there are a lot of selfish nasty shits out there with a vote, and Reform want to be their best mates.
+1
(Good ev channel btw. I dont have a tesla though)
Thanks! I'm also working on branching out: Launched a politics show with an old mate called "Emergency Podcast". A few false starts, but we're now into a flow with reels being clipped which are doing well. I'm then dumping those reels onto TikTok which is also gaining traction. I've then done a couple of test reels of me solo doing politics. Trying to get a feel for how / what to produce to go out on all platforms for my coming Holyrood run Our toys business ("Milibricks") has a few test reels on YT/TT which are starting to get views - just gone through 1k on YT
As well as two day jobs in the food industry...
Not my area (I do have a podcast but it's very much a side thing) but I've heard that YouTube shorts can be surprisingly effective for driving up interest in the algorithm. Probably something you already know but thought I'd mention it.
Edited: it's this kind of flawless self-promotion that may explain why I don't have a hundred thousand listeners...
Ahem, it's on F1, called Undercutters, and you can find it many places, including here:
Communism when Jeremy Corbyn's Labour proposed the same thing. In America, it's investment.
They’ve got a point, when there’s tens of billions from various State and Federal schemes aimed at rural broadband, yet very few people appear to have been actually connected, the money mostly disappearing in the supply chain of politically-connected companies. Starlink delivers rural broadband for a fraction of the cost and the infrastructure is already in place.
Now there’s an argument to have about one company having a monopoly on satellite broadband, but they’ve built the network entirely with private funds.
Yes. So let's have it. The argument in full is
GIVING A MONOPOLY ON A STRATEGIC ASSET TO A PRIVATE INDIVIDUAL IS STUPID AND WE SHOULD NOT DO IT
This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.
The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":
Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.
At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".
"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.
During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.
"It's not fair on taxpayers."
Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?
Because there are a lot of selfish nasty shits out there with a vote, and Reform want to be their best mates.
+1
(Good ev channel btw. I dont have a tesla though)
Thanks! I'm also working on branching out: Launched a politics show with an old mate called "Emergency Podcast". A few false starts, but we're now into a flow with reels being clipped which are doing well. I'm then dumping those reels onto TikTok which is also gaining traction. I've then done a couple of test reels of me solo doing politics. Trying to get a feel for how / what to produce to go out on all platforms for my coming Holyrood run Our toys business ("Milibricks") has a few test reels on YT/TT which are starting to get views - just gone through 1k on YT
This is the stuff that will help Reform sink themselves - basic, lazy, ignorant abusive behaviour. Labour Councillor granted one year non-personal-attendance at meetings; RefUK Councillor commenting. This is one I had not seen.
The excuse was roughly "but nobody told me it was cancer, so my actions were OK":
Carol Hyatt has non-Hodgkin lymphoma and due to her illness City of Wolverhampton Council has given her a dispensation to carry out her duties from home.
At the meeting on Wednesday, councillor Anita Stanley said she did not feel Hyatt's arrangement was "very fair on the residents".
"I'm immunocompromised, I can do everything, but I can't go out because then I'll get sepsis and could die, but I've done my very best still represent my ward," Hyatt told the BBC.
During a full council discussion about a proposed extension of Hyatt's dispensation to work from home, Stanley stood up and said: "I do not feel it is very fair on the residents not to have a political representative being able to speak up for them for the period of effectively one whole year.
"It's not fair on taxpayers."
Hyatt said: "The situation is not a party political thing so why would you treat any human being like that when they're fighting cancer and going through treatment?
Because there are a lot of selfish nasty shits out there with a vote, and Reform want to be their best mates.
+1
(Good ev channel btw. I dont have a tesla though)
Thanks! I'm also working on branching out: Launched a politics show with an old mate called "Emergency Podcast". A few false starts, but we're now into a flow with reels being clipped which are doing well. I'm then dumping those reels onto TikTok which is also gaining traction. I've then done a couple of test reels of me solo doing politics. Trying to get a feel for how / what to produce to go out on all platforms for my coming Holyrood run Our toys business ("Milibricks") has a few test reels on YT/TT which are starting to get views - just gone through 1k on YT
As well as two day jobs in the food industry...
Two day jobs? That's greedy!
I have a just purchased a non Tesla ev and am investigating tesla superchargers as they seem incredibly cheap compared to other cpos.
I've just been catching up on the past thread. Congratulations to @HYUFD
I always assumed old mate was in his early 80s so a bit of a surprise. Like when we found out Morris Dancer isn't actually in his 70s I nearly fell off my fucking "Gamer" chair.
I missed this, what happened (congrats to HYUFD in any case!)
Expecting a happy event in November 👍
Kemi given the boot and Mel Stride elected leader on a wave of one nation enthusiasm?
In any case congrats HYUFD on the actual happy event.
Is Mel Stride still One Nation?
I think he's pivoted towards Jenrick / Philp. He was 2nd in the last Con Home poll, and they are hardly what is left of the One Nation wing.
I was probably implying a form of one nationism which includes tanks sent to quell the separatists.
Comments
I've been advocating:
Increasing income tax
Increasing fuel duty
Increasing council tax
All of these would affect me.
I've also been advocating:
Increasing the state retirement age
Ending the triple lock
Ending wfa
All of these would affect me assuming I live long enough.
Now if you want to cut waste and make public services more efficient then go ahead but it will be far harder to do in practice than to talk about it here.
And it still wont change the fundamental fact that this country has been living beyond its means for decades and that road is finally drawing to and end, so falls in living standards are going to happen.
In any sane organisation there needs to be cost control.
I’ve actually worked in an organisation that abandoned cost control. The result was actually worse - a pile of parasites transferred in to spend money. On themselves, literally, in a number of cases.
What is needed is a joined up approach to current spending and investment and what those actually mean.
I actually asked the local council about their taxi SEND policy. After ages someone finally admitted that one of the taxi firms had actually asked them if they could use a minibus - drivers at schools times are at a premium. But apparently this would require a professional risk assessment, then a whole safety case would need writing up. No money…
We're burning the cash.
I don't think higher taxes is the answer - most of the rich will evade them
We can't spend less on the old and poor - its already a pittance.
Productivity is down because conditions are awful. We've managed to deliver both high reading attainment in English primary schools and a teaching profession exhausted and quitting because conditions are so bad. Want people to be more productive? Fix their working environment.
People are already retiring later. They will retire sooner as AI takes jobs
You are fiddling around the edges. We need to address the structural failures in our economy - in short we stopped investing. The state doesn't invest so business doesn't invest.
A national program of renewal - borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment. Capitalism on stilts. Put the infrastructure in to allow business to thrive and it will. Make big business properly train and pay its staff in return for corporation tax cuts. Invest into construction so we can build houses for LHAs to bring housing costs down and free money to circulate through the economy. Invest in energy efficiency so we consume less and bring leccy prices down and with it the cost of everything we buy.
The big picture allows you to do the little stuff. Without the big picture we can't do the little stuff.
A few farms reporting early harvest up here due to dry conditions, crops ripening much earlier. yield may be down where crop growth has been stunted
This is the mentality of Britain.
Alternatively, Rachel, just put a penny or two on Income Tax and stop faffing around the edges.
But there is a comparison. Paying more income tax. Fuel duty. Council tax. Annoying. A squeeze, but largely manageable for most people. You and I can likely cope.
Cutting welfare so tell people to "make some sacrifices" is largely unmanageable. If welfare was luxury largesse then maybe. Performative cuts on the poorest make their lives practically unliveable. Cuts to disability so that the disabled can't work, can't travel, can't get up. That is what "make some sacrifices" always means to the poorest and sickest.
What should be there instead is an annual low % asset/property tax but the transition needs to be carefully and gradually done otherwise it will be electoral suicide for whichever party introduces it.
I have absolutely no confidence that Reeves won't stamp hard on this 'rake', she's proving to be a terrible appointment.
As to 'borrow, invest, deliver a return on the investment', its even more fantasy world.
In the real world the return on many investments is negative.
And investing follows the law of diminishing marginal returns and rising costs.
What you're advocating is for people, businesses and government to borrow themselves to bankruptcy.
And its all irrelevant anyway unless you can convince the bond markets.
You don’t need a posh blazer to learn your times tables, and Shakespeare is just as inspiring in a supermarket sweater.
Ahead of the school term I'm calling on schools to bring uniform costs down now, rather than wait for Labour's new laws to take action.
https://x.com/bphillipsonmp/status/1957731516747772220?s=46
If you wanted to impose it without those bad effects you could roll it over till retirement or something I guess? Or death even - you could call it an inheritance tax...wait a minute...
Nigelb said:
» show previous quotes
I was suggesting your obsession is with the LibDems, FWIW.
You are complaining about someone having an obsession with the Libdems on a site full of political anoraks talking about politics, betting, and mens shed TV topical issues because they happened to mention the only newsworthy thing that their party Leader Ed Davey has uttered all summer? Well its a view.
People are prepared to accept some hardship as long as they don't think they're losing out to others.
So "we're all in this together" needs to be more than a slogan.
And once you start exempting one group, others will want an exemption as well.
So the poor are exempted.
And then the old.
Followed by the disabled.
And kids.
Then the public sector.
Or any other group politicians want to pander to.
With those left not being enough to bear all the burden or with options to opt out altogether by emigrating or stopping work.
Bond markets don't like governments spraying cash around with no plan. They like big investment projects and there's an awful lot of cash out there looking for something to invest in.
As for the rest, you may have given up on capitalism but I haven't. You also used the word "spending" to replace "investing". This is Thatcherism's legacy - investment is "spending".
When the mob are made to look ridiculous they're most likely to turn their pitchforks on their leaders
I commented only the other day in a light hearted way by asking whether he was a member of the Institute of Bar Charts to be so obsessed and offended by the LDs.
PS Oh and they are not a supporter. The complete opposite. So obsessed even when there isn't any news.
Even avowed anti-imperialists/ post-colonialists tend to prioritise between empires. Their own ancestors were bearers of civilisation and culture, whereas yours were savage brutes.
Turks admire Mehmet II and Suleiman the Magnificent; Iranians admire Shah Abbas and Nadir Shah; Sikhs admire Ranjit Singh; the Chinese admire their mighty Emperors; Arabs admire the Rashidun Caliphate; Mongols and Central Asians admire Genghis Khan, and so on.
This attitude is less unhealthy for a nation than beating themselves up over their ancestors' misdeeds. It becomes problematic only when it's used to justify irredentist claims on territory - which is the outlook of modern Russia, a mix of triumphalism and self-pity.
September is the month used for the annual uprate of benefits and (possibly also) state pension.
That's another £12b Reeves will need to find by April.
But we can’t do something new without a report!!!!! Must Have Report…
The report would costs thousands, I was told.
It'd have a certain logic though. Taxing gains accords with our mindset that property is more an investment than a place to live. This is one of the factors contributing to our rather messed-up housing market.
There is an enormous industry of H&S; environmental; planning etc risk assessors and box tickers, which makes doing anything with any element of contact with the public immensely onerous, expensive, and slow.
Clearly there are tradeoffs in all the areas that regulation touches, but I suspect very few people would argue we've got the balance right in any given area they have direct experience of.
In the past I worked with many people of Irish heritage in Brum, none of whom supported the IRA. There are plenty of other vehicles to support opposition to what is going on in Gaza.
I like Nigel, he is always interesting, I’ve no beef with him at all but he does have his obsessions as well. One being Kamala during the US elections
Grenfell had metric tons of paper saying it was the bestest building in the whole world.
I would bet that no one actually checks that the driver of the taxi/bus has a CRB check. Or that the actual physical vehicle isn’t actually on fire.
But there will be hundreds of pages about people saying that these things are importantly, that they should be checked, that they would be checked etc.
I was having what I thought was a mild dig at Taz, in response to his saying of Davey: This moron supports them (Palestine Action) as it’s a cosy, middle class, obsession.
As the accusation was plain wrong, I thought a little pushback was merited.
FWIW.
Part of the problem with child trust funds was, it was a great idea badly managed, and many companies offering them simply rinsed the fund with charges.
That would need to be avoided. Something like Vanguards VWRD would be ideal.
Now there’s an argument to have about one company having a monopoly on satellite broadband, but they’ve built the network entirely with private funds.
All of the main parties know it is not sustainable and it is not fair, but for political reasons they support it.
It is ripe for,reform and it is shameful Labour took it out of scope for the pension review.
I normally find him a bit crusty / stuck a bit in former times, but here some interesting insights especially on how he thinks both Sunak and Starmer have failed to engage with the reality of hybrid war in the UK. 35 mnutes - so quite long. I found the 2nd half more interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgRx54Q_jks
A bit like politicians in the eighties on the left who clearly didn’t support the IRA but happy to support people who did.
He should have qualified what he said and say the proscription is wrong in his view, if it is his view, and he gets the supporters but it is not right to support a proscribed group.
Times and balance have changed over the last 6 or 7 years.
A wonderful dinner was had in the award-winning Szara Ges restaurant, definitely recommended and half the price of similar restaurants in London. https://szarages.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HMiX7iFOwo
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4000769-the-young-fogey-handbook
Arguably the 21stC equivalent ?
Cut Benefits
Tax all benefits like all other income is taxed
To explain: this is the box where I mentally store “subjects that are too intractable and depressing to think about”
As we all know, morris dancers are known for our maturity and seemingly timeless wisdom.
And yes, saying that criminalising a bunch of middle class protestors for doing not very much (and they certainly weren't supporting "terrorism"), by using the act in this manner, is pretty well exactly the qualification he expressed.
(Good ev channel btw. I dont have a tesla though)
Meanwhile in Russia: Vladimir Solovyov found himself in hot water, having just found out that the Ukrainian delegation handed Trump a list of his quotes deriding the U.S. president (my channel is replete with them). Solovyov says he was always for Trump.
https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1957911495762907477
Supporting Palestine action is currently illegal.
All those arrested are either idiots or doing it deliberately to get arrested to make a point.
They’re being arrested for supporting, openly supporting, a proscribed terrorist group. That’s not wrong and as to their innocence or otherwise that’s for a court to decide.
The odd case where an innocent person has been arrested, like the Plasticene action guy, then clearly that’s fine.
In any case congrats HYUFD on the actual happy event.
(2024 lecky demand was 319.0 TWh, so it looks like solar will do ~7% this year, given it is not all metered.)
Some 14.08 terawatt hours of electricity was produced from solar in Great Britain by August 16, about one-third higher than at this time last year, a Financial Times analysis of University of Sheffield data has found. This is enough to power 5.2mn homes for a year, or the London Underground for more than a decade.
The figures underline the momentum of Britain’s clean energy push, but also highlight the need for the grid to be able to cope with more variable power sources.
...
Neso is also overhauling the grid connection process in an effort to prioritise clean power schemes and remove “zombie” projects with little hope of ever being built.
The move came after the developers of some proposed solar schemes had been told they would not be connected to the grid until the late 2030s. Neso said the change would “allow us to connect clean energy projects more quickly, creating a better environment for private investment”.
Investment by developers has nonetheless resulted in a big increase in solar plants over the past five years, government data shows. Of the 18.1GW of solar capacity online in the UK as of the end of March, more than 12.4GW was supported by some government subsidies and 5.6GW was not.
Industry says the total capacity is higher than official government figures, at about 22GW.
In addition, since December 2021, solar developers have won government support deals — know as contracts for difference — covering about 7GW of new projects that are still being built. Long-term deals to supply specific big electricity customers are also becoming important sources of funding.
Had he gone into residential care at 85, he'd have enjoyed three years of a very nice life (if not longer) but he steadsfastly refused to leave the bungalow ("this is my home and I want to stay here"). until the fall. Financially, the short duration of his stay worked out well for me and my brother and we both got a small inheritance which helped.
That's the thing - you need systems and processes which are flexible as everyone is different, their expectations and aspirations are different. We need a quality fo residential care where I think we fall short currently (but if you bring the profit motive into it, as with everything else, it becomes about the cost of everything and the value of nothing).
We probably need to rethink our relationship with ageing and death.
I think he's pivoted towards Jenrick / Philp. He was 2nd in the last Con Home poll, and they are hardly what is left of the One Nation wing.
He was a crafty old fox.
It’s the old thing, like was done with Exctinction rebellion and Just Stop Oil. Peaceful protest is not necessarily legal protest.
The fact he says they’re innocent makes me question his judgement when, as you say, some have clearly set out to be arrested.
Launched a politics show with an old mate called "Emergency Podcast". A few false starts, but we're now into a flow with reels being clipped which are doing well. I'm then dumping those reels onto TikTok which is also gaining traction.
I've then done a couple of test reels of me solo doing politics. Trying to get a feel for how / what to produce to go out on all platforms for my coming Holyrood run
Our toys business ("Milibricks") has a few test reels on YT/TT which are starting to get views - just gone through 1k on YT
As well as two day jobs in the food industry...
Edited: it's this kind of flawless self-promotion that may explain why I don't have a hundred thousand listeners...
Ahem, it's on F1, called Undercutters, and you can find it many places, including here:
https://undercutters.podbean.com/
GIVING A MONOPOLY ON A STRATEGIC ASSET TO A PRIVATE INDIVIDUAL IS STUPID AND WE SHOULD NOT DO IT
There y'go.
I have a just purchased a non Tesla ev and am investigating tesla superchargers as they seem incredibly cheap compared to other cpos.
I will seek out the podcasts you mentioned.