Listening to her speech, the single biggest problem is that all the things she says need to be done are precisely the things her party has spent a decade demonstrating that they are incapable of doing. .
Exactly.
Why should anyone believe them.
A decade in purgatory beckons.
Deservedly so
Very, very positive response to the Tories on WATO. And a blast from the past, Julie Kirkbride who is now a More in Common pollster.
Helen Whateley very impressed with Kemi today. Whateley suggesting that the ending of stamp duty will be paid for by cuts. There is no replacement tax ( yet) apparently.
I’d be more surprised if Whateley was not impressed.
I haven’t listened to WATO in years. I’m watching the last Michael Praed episode of Robin of Sherwood. The Greatest Enema. It’s quite good.
(hums Clannad)
It’s a great theme
You’re a cult tv fan.
Have you ever rewatched an old tv show you had happy memories of that disappointed.
I have, it was this.
It’s okay but nothing special
Rather sadly, I was also disappointed when I rewatched Robin of Sherwood: not because it was bad, but the slow pace didn't work any more. What was appropriate in the era of four channels and rainy afternoons doesn't work in the 2020s. I have a horrible feeling the same thing would happen if I rewatched The Children Of The Stones or Airwolf. And I'm not going near Space:1999 (1st series), just in case.
It's not all bad news: when I went to the BFI to see a film (see previous posts), I spent about a hour in its "mediatheque", a free-access row of terminals where you could rewatch programmes. I watched an episode of Edge of Darkness ("Northmoor") and it really stood up. And I think/hope Our Friends In The North would too. And I rewatched some episodes of Big Deal and they really worked, at least for a bit. How about Tales Of The Unexpected, at least the early scripts. Perhaps they would too.
Now I'm wondering. Now we are past the laugh-at-the-tacky effects, if we considered Blake's 7 as a period piece: would it still stand up? Similarly, Miami Vice. Hmmm
The Thing (1982 version) was absolutely cemented in my mind as a classic from when I first saw it but I was pretty disappointed when I recently caught it on tv. Not terrible but just a bit quaint, not what you want in scarily bleak sci-fi.
Damn, I wish you hadn't said that.
There's a trend for directors to release cuts that aren't as good as the original. Coppola ruined "Apocalypse Now" with his "Final Cut" . I'm pretty sure the "Aliens" extended version is worse than the original. I didn't know Ridley, bless his cotton socks, had *also* tweaked "Alien" and that was the version they showed at the recent BFI showing...which was why I didn't go and see it (well, that and the storm). This "new" version has an argument with Lambert and Ripley (good) and a clip of a cocooned Dallas (bad), and you just think: dude, you had it the first time. Stop messing around.
If Michael Mann edits "Manhunter" or "Heat" I'm going to throw things.
Eh, last time I watched The Thing it still really worked for me.
Coppola's mistake with Apocalypse Now is the refusal to realise that the French Plantation section should have been pulled out and extended as its own separate piece.
I love Lenny, used to see him in Nostalgia and Comics in the early eighties reading the DC comics.
He used to be fab before reinventing himself as a race grifter
Tell him to GFH
I enjoyed him in Not the Nine O’Clock News.
His sketch shows were very funny into the mid nineties.
Then he started making unfunny programmes. Then he started complaining about not getting commissioned, claiming it was racist. In fact, in was because he was no longer funny. It's been downhill from there.
A few years ago I looked into buying a place in the Florida Keys. No state income tax, but annual land value tax to squeeze the snow birds. Each town appeared to set their own % and they seemed to compete with each other to keep it low. 0.5% or 0.6% wasn't uncommon.
Switzerland, not noted as a high-tax country, has a wealth tax of 0.3-0.5% (determined by canton), with no significant exemptions but the first N francs free, typically £50,000 or so - the purpose apart from raising money is to encourage better-off people to invest rather than just having the money sitting around on a bank account. It's not important early in life but becomes a significant factor if you're thinking of early retirement. https://thepoorswiss.com/wealth-tax/
All the Lou Grade ITC dramas, most notably the colour episodes of the Saint, the Avengers (I still have a thing for Linda Thorson) the Champions, the Protectors, Department S, Man In a Suitcase, the Zoo Gang, the Prisoner, the Baron and the Persuaders etc were all very well written and performed. Even if a street in London looked exactly the same as a Street in Monte Carlo. The only series that didn't really work was the Adventurer because Gene Barry couldn't work with any actor who was taller than him, and apparently he was short!
The Verity Lambert, Thames productions like the Sweeney and Minder all stand up to scrutiny too.
Verity Lambert wasn’t involved in The Sweeney
Some of those ITC series had some belting themes too.
Me and my two buddies used to drive around in my old Triumph Acclaim like we were Regan, Carter and Daniel’s fr9 the sweeney.
Happy days. I remember my mate came out of Shirley police station. Rolled over the bonnet for effect . He’d been called in to make peace with a whovian twat he’d upset. And we drove off up the M42 to the wood for some chips
Ace days
It’s a great series.
It was Linda Agran wasn't it and the producer was Ted Childs? Still very, very good.
All the Lou Grade ITC dramas, most notably the colour episodes of the Saint, the Avengers (I still have a thing for Linda Thorson) the Champions, the Protectors, Department S, Man In a Suitcase, the Zoo Gang, the Prisoner, the Baron and the Persuaders etc were all very well written and performed. Even if a street in London looked exactly the same as a Street in Monte Carlo. The only series that didn't really work was the Adventurer because Gene Barry couldn't work with any actor who was taller than him, and apparently he was short!
The Verity Lambert, Thames productions like the Sweeney and Minder all stand up to scrutiny too.
I find Rigg and Thorson Avengers very slow if I watch them now, although The New Avengers holds up better.
The link to a political blog is Patrick Macnee and hence John Steed sounded exactly like Peter Temple -Morris.
I will need a similar amount for how the British Empire treated my antecedents in British India.
Do you have a crowdfunder.
I’ll set one up, I’ll tell people how the grandson of humble immigrants grew up on the mean streets of Sheffield and needs your support to buy shoes and technology.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%.
Depending where you are - up north it's probably 1% and I could probably find properties where it's 2-3% of the valuation without much difficulty...
My former flat in Ashington. Value £35k. Council Tax £1450 p.a.
A 1% property tax (which you can probably cut to 0.6-75% if you have higher tiers for rarely used properties) could have been a fabulous driver of leveling up. It would have made living (and having businesses) in places outside the South East that bit more attractive.
A few years ago I looked into buying a place in the Florida Keys. No state income tax, but annual land value tax to squeeze the snow birds. Each town appeared to set their own % and they seemed to compete with each other to keep it low. 0.5% or 0.6% wasn't uncommon.
Which is exactly what you want, local authorities competing with each other to attract residents and businesses.
In terms of businesses, that isn't what you tend to get when you have large local variations in taxes. The local authorities compete for the highly mobile businesses that can locate anywhere and up sticks quite easily, so they all get a free lunch while the poor bugger running a quarry or whatever pays their bill for them.
It wouldn't really work because most council spending in the UK is a statutory duty, as well as 0.5% in Middlesbrough bring a bit different to that raised in Kensington.
A national property tax minima + optional top ups might work.
Perhaps we could sort out social care funding at the same time...
There has to be some element of local tax otherwise local democracy becomes barely worth doing.
In which case we return to the great poll tax justifications of the Thatcher era.
I also recall the gerrymandering at Westminster, with the deportation of proles etc to other London boroughs, and the division of Greater Glasgow so the rich suburbs in the outer ring didn't have to cross-subsidise the proles - a major reason for breaking up Strathclyde Region.
But all those here - and in other posts today - are good questions with interesting comments.
I will need a similar amount for how the British Empire treated my antecedents in British India.
Do you have a crowdfunder.
I’ll set one up, I’ll tell people how the grandson of humble immigrants grew up on the mean streets of Sheffield and needs your support to buy shoes and technology.
#TheStruggleIsReal
Can I, as the downtrodden son of Welsh mining stock sue the British Government for a century of church mouse poverty?
I accept White privilege as a thing, but I am not sure my predecessors saw much benefit. Paul Robeson saw us as his brothers in arms.
All the Lou Grade ITC dramas, most notably the colour episodes of the Saint, the Avengers (I still have a thing for Linda Thorson) the Champions, the Protectors, Department S, Man In a Suitcase, the Zoo Gang, the Prisoner, the Baron and the Persuaders etc were all very well written and performed. Even if a street in London looked exactly the same as a Street in Monte Carlo. The only series that didn't really work was the Adventurer because Gene Barry couldn't work with any actor who was taller than him, and apparently he was short!
The Verity Lambert, Thames productions like the Sweeney and Minder all stand up to scrutiny too.
Verity Lambert wasn’t involved in The Sweeney
Some of those ITC series had some belting themes too.
Me and my two buddies used to drive around in my old Triumph Acclaim like we were Regan, Carter and Daniel’s fr9 the sweeney.
Happy days. I remember my mate came out of Shirley police station. Rolled over the bonnet for effect . He’d been called in to make peace with a whovian twat he’d upset. And we drove off up the M42 to the wood for some chips
Ace days
It’s a great series.
It was Linda Agran wasn't it and the producer was Ted Childs? Still very, very good.
Yes, it was.
Ted Childs was also involved in The Sweeney.
Minder, especially the earlier episodes, is excellent.
All the Lou Grade ITC dramas, most notably the colour episodes of the Saint, the Avengers (I still have a thing for Linda Thorson) the Champions, the Protectors, Department S, Man In a Suitcase, the Zoo Gang, the Prisoner, the Baron and the Persuaders etc were all very well written and performed. Even if a street in London looked exactly the same as a Street in Monte Carlo. The only series that didn't really work was the Adventurer because Gene Barry couldn't work with any actor who was taller than him, and apparently he was short!
The Verity Lambert, Thames productions like the Sweeney and Minder all stand up to scrutiny too.
I find Rigg and Thorson Avengers very slow if I watch them now, although The New Avengers holds up better.
The link to a political blog is Patrick Macnee and hence John Steed sounded exactly like Peter Temple -Morris.
On the shadowy table that’s the £50 bottle of Monterey Pinot and the £100 pair of Nocs binoculars that was waiting in my goodie bag. Not that I’m vulgarly exulting or anything. Did I mention I love my job?
Also a can of water for sociological interest
Sea otter for scale (there actually is one in the picture but he’s about half a mile away)
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%.
Depending where you are - up north it's probably 1% and I could probably find properties where it's 2-3% of the valuation without much difficulty...
My former flat in Ashington. Value £35k. Council Tax £1450 p.a.
A 1% property tax (which you can probably cut to 0.6-75% if you have higher tiers for rarely used properties) could have been a fabulous driver of leveling up. It would have made living (and having businesses) in places outside the South East that bit more attractive.
A few years ago I looked into buying a place in the Florida Keys. No state income tax, but annual land value tax to squeeze the snow birds. Each town appeared to set their own % and they seemed to compete with each other to keep it low. 0.5% or 0.6% wasn't uncommon.
Which is exactly what you want, local authorities competing with each other to attract residents and businesses.
In terms of businesses, that isn't what you tend to get when you have large local variations in taxes. The local authorities compete for the highly mobile businesses that can locate anywhere and up sticks quite easily, so they all get a free lunch while the poor bugger running a quarry or whatever pays their bill for them.
It wouldn't really work because most council spending in the UK is a statutory duty, as well as 0.5% in Middlesbrough bring a bit different to that raised in Kensington.
A national property tax minima + optional top ups might work.
Perhaps we could sort out social care funding at the same time...
There has to be some element of local tax otherwise local democracy becomes barely worth doing.
In which case we return to the great poll tax justifications of the Thatcher era.
I also recall the gerrymandering at Westminster, with the deportation of proles etc to other London boroughs, and the division of Greater Glasgow so the rich suburbs in the outer ring didn't have to cross-subsidise the proles - a major reason for breaking up Strathclyde Region.
But all those here - and in other posts today - are good questions with interesting comments.
Yes, I remember the justifications for the 'community charge', although it was vastly more regressive than a property tax. I recall Mrs Flatlander had to pay it from very little income.
I just worry that an elected body with very little in the way tax raising powers is quite a weak one.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%. Stamp Duty 0.2%.
1% would allow you to abolish CGT and IHT too, which is what I'd do.
If you abolish CGT, then people like me will just convert all their income into capital gains.
I'm not sure what that means. You can't spend capital down the shops.
You can, however, spend capital gains. It's relatively easy for people who own businesses to choose whether to allow money to be extracted via share buybacks (capital gains), dividends or salary.
All forms of income should be treated as equally as possible, because otherwise sharp tax accountants will find ways to convert betwee them.
I will need a similar amount for how the British Empire treated my antecedents in British India.
Do you have a crowdfunder.
I’ll set one up, I’ll tell people how the grandson of humble immigrants grew up on the mean streets of Sheffield and needs your support to buy shoes and technology.
#TheStruggleIsReal
Can I, as the downtrodden son of Welsh mining stock sue the British Government for a century of church mouse poverty?
I accept White privilege as a thing, but I am not sure my predecessors saw much benefit. Paul Robeson saw us as his brothers in arms.
Listening to her speech, the single biggest problem is that all the things she says need to be done are precisely the things her party has spent a decade demonstrating that they are incapable of doing. .
Exactly.
Why should anyone believe them.
A decade in purgatory beckons.
Deservedly so
Very, very positive response to the Tories on WATO. And a blast from the past, Julie Kirkbride who is now a More in Common pollster.
Helen Whateley very impressed with Kemi today. Whateley suggesting that the ending of stamp duty will be paid for by cuts. There is no replacement tax ( yet) apparently.
I’d be more surprised if Whateley was not impressed.
I haven’t listened to WATO in years. I’m watching the last Michael Praed episode of Robin of Sherwood. The Greatest Enema. It’s quite good.
(hums Clannad)
It’s a great theme
You’re a cult tv fan.
Have you ever rewatched an old tv show you had happy memories of that disappointed.
I have, it was this.
It’s okay but nothing special
Rather sadly, I was also disappointed when I rewatched Robin of Sherwood: not because it was bad, but the slow pace didn't work any more. What was appropriate in the era of four channels and rainy afternoons doesn't work in the 2020s. I have a horrible feeling the same thing would happen if I rewatched The Children Of The Stones or Airwolf. And I'm not going near Space:1999 (1st series), just in case.
It's not all bad news: when I went to the BFI to see a film (see previous posts), I spent about a hour in its "mediatheque", a free-access row of terminals where you could rewatch programmes. I watched an episode of Edge of Darkness ("Northmoor") and it really stood up. And I think/hope Our Friends In The North would too. And I rewatched some episodes of Big Deal and they really worked, at least for a bit. How about Tales Of The Unexpected, at least the early scripts. Perhaps they would too.
Now I'm wondering. Now we are past the laugh-at-the-tacky effects, if we considered Blake's 7 as a period piece: would it still stand up? Similarly, Miami Vice. Hmmm
The Thing (1982 version) was absolutely cemented in my mind as a classic from when I first saw it but I was pretty disappointed when I recently caught it on tv. Not terrible but just a bit quaint, not what you want in scarily bleak sci-fi.
Damn, I wish you hadn't said that.
There's a trend for directors to release cuts that aren't as good as the original. Coppola ruined "Apocalypse Now" with his "Final Cut" . I'm pretty sure the "Aliens" extended version is worse than the original. I didn't know Ridley, bless his cotton socks, had *also* tweaked "Alien" and that was the version they showed at the recent BFI showing...which was why I didn't go and see it (well, that and the storm). This "new" version has an argument with Lambert and Ripley (good) and a clip of a cocooned Dallas (bad), and you just think: dude, you had it the first time. Stop messing around.
If Michael Mann edits "Manhunter" or "Heat" I'm going to throw things.
Eh, last time I watched The Thing it still really worked for me.
Coppola's mistake with Apocalypse Now is the refusal to realise that the French Plantation section should have been pulled out and extended as its own separate piece.
Wait. Coppola only made one mistake with Apocalypse Now?
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%. Stamp Duty 0.2%.
1% would allow you to abolish CGT and IHT too, which is what I'd do.
If you abolish CGT, then people like me will just convert all their income into capital gains.
I'm not sure what that means. You can't spend capital down the shops.
Newham raises about a quarter to a third of its budget requirement through the Council Tax - it's actually £110 million out of a budget of £394 million.
When considering how to reform local Government finance, property is an important element but not the only one. Newham gets 70% of its income from central Government, other authorities get a lot less. In Newham, the average property price is about £450k but that ranges from low value properties in East Ham and Plashet to multi million pound riverside apartments down by Custom House and Royal Albert Dock.
If a national property tax of 0.5% were introduced, my back of a Council Tax invoice calculation was Stodge Towers would pay about the same as we do under Council Tax but clearly the £5 million riverside apartment would pay a lot more - £25k per year (if my sums are right).
The central question is what we are trying to achieve - if the aim is to raise a greater proportion of the funds spent by local councils locally with less coming from central Government, fine. For Newham to achieve a 50/50 split between locally raised and nationally allocated finds, the Council would need to raise another £85 million through the Council Tax. I don't know how much the 0.5% national property tax would raise in Newham but it could be calculated.
The current level of Government largesse to councils is £65 billion so if that figure can be reduced via more funding raised from local property and land taxation, that would seem a sensible option to explore.
The big ticket expenditure items are, as we know, the social care provision for vulnerable adults AND children (the latter are too often forgotten). 52% of Newham's spending is on those two items (29% and 23% respectively). If this were to be funded via some form of national scheme (to be fair, we already pay a local precept on top of Council Tax) that would revolutionise the funding situation for the Council.
On the shadowy table that’s the £50 bottle of Monterey Pinot and the £100 pair of Nocs binoculars that was waiting in my goodie bag. Not that I’m vulgarly exulting or anything. Did I mention I love my job?
Also a can of water for sociological interest
Sea otter for scale (there actually is one in the picture but he’s about half a mile away)
Monterey is a bit of a hole; next door Carmel is rather nice and is worthy of a visit. If you get a chance, make it down to Big Sur.
"You think he's kidding when he talks about wanting to run again? You think he built a ballroom so that, you know, J.B. Pritzker, when he moves in, can have that ballroom? No, he built it for himself."
I will need a similar amount for how the British Empire treated my antecedents in British India.
Introduced railways, common law, Westminster style democracy and stopped widows being thrown on funeral pyres?
Also the Bengal famine and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre which were two crimes against humanity.
The Bengal famine was partly a natural disaster and at a time India was in danger of being invaded by Japan so resources were focused on the war effort.
Dyer was removed from his post after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and even Churchill condemned it
On the shadowy table that’s the £50 bottle of Monterey Pinot and the £100 pair of Nocs binoculars that was waiting in my goodie bag. Not that I’m vulgarly exulting or anything. Did I mention I love my job?
Also a can of water for sociological interest
Sea otter for scale (there actually is one in the picture but he’s about half a mile away)
Monterey is a bit of a hole; next door Carmel is rather nice and is worthy of a visit. If you get a chance, make it down to Big Sur.
A bit of a hole?! It’s lovely. Yes there’s still an edge of grittiness but o like that. It feels more authentic than a billionaire theme park like Carmel (which i know)
And the sea kayaking is world class. Genuinely. I’ve done a lot of kayaking now and here you can get so close to sea lions and otters it’s dazzling
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%. Stamp Duty 0.2%.
1% would allow you to abolish CGT and IHT too, which is what I'd do.
If you abolish CGT, then people like me will just convert all their income into capital gains.
I'm not sure what that means. You can't spend capital down the shops.
You can, however, spend capital gains. It's relatively easy for people who own businesses to choose whether to allow money to be extracted via share buybacks (capital gains), dividends or salary.
All forms of income should be treated as equally as possible, because otherwise sharp tax accountants will find ways to convert betwee them.
If you’re really rich you don’t even need to do that, just take a bank loan secured on your company’s stock. Ask how Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t take a salary from the companies they founded.
Did I hear Kemi in her speech today say that borrowing all that money we borrow is stealing from our children and grandchildren, and then not point out that her party's policy is to carry on doing it with no plan for paying it back?
The question is whether Jenrick is “racist” is not illuminating. Yet, whether something or someone is “racist” consumes a massive amount of media attention and focus in 2025.
No, what is relevant is that Jenrick’s comments - taken out of context or not - were offensive.
God only knows how I’d feel if I was a brown migrant or perhaps even just brown, in the UK today. I would not be feeling very welcome, and I would also be feeling that the next Tory leader is stoking racial enmity for partisan advantage.
Jenrick should apologize, but he hasn’t and he won’t. He’s beyond the pale.
There is a trend on the right to stop apologising - see also Truss's refusal to disassociate herself from Tommy Robinson. Liz Truss isn't a supporter of Tommy Robinson, but she refused to give any ground on it because she did not want to continue what she sees as the left being given the right to pronounce on what is right and decent, and what, as you say, is 'beyond the pale'.
If someone wants the right to pronounce on what is 'right and decent', I might suggest they start by not associating herself with criminal neo-Nazi thugs.
Truss is not setting herself up as the pronouncer of what is right and decent - she is refusing to submit to what is effectively a left-wing derived rulebook of modern manners.
Don't be a nitwit. You don't need to be left-wing to criticise Tommy Robinson.
She is making the same mistake as Enoch Powell who refused to give any ground to his critics even when the criticism was justified. The latest episode of The Rest is History is very good on this and how his utter refusal to show or express any empathy for those harmed by his words, even in the face of clear evidence of such harm, damned him even more. He didn't simply make criticisms. He deliberately used inflammatory language and then tried to claim the consequences of his choice of words had nothing to do with him.
This is irresponsible dangerous politics. It is as bad as those marchers shouting Arab slogans from the 8th century about killing Jews and then pretending this has nothing to do with creating a climate of fear.
Tory politicians should not be behaving like this.
This perhaps applies to Jenrick's comments, but I don't think to Truss's. As a right-winger on this site, I don't think that I would have said what Robert Jenrick said - or even thought it to be frank. However, I have not heard the full conversation, so I am not really prepared to condemn him for it. Politically, to come out guns blazing rather than apologising seems to have been a gamble that has paid off.
Truss's comments on Tommy Robinson I don't think fall into that category. I find it interesting, and not entirely unwelcome, that neither has chosen to issue an apology that they don't mean.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%. Stamp Duty 0.2%.
1% would allow you to abolish CGT and IHT too, which is what I'd do.
If you abolish CGT, then people like me will just convert all their income into capital gains.
I'm not sure what that means. You can't spend capital down the shops.
You can, however, spend capital gains. It's relatively easy for people who own businesses to choose whether to allow money to be extracted via share buybacks (capital gains), dividends or salary.
All forms of income should be treated as equally as possible, because otherwise sharp tax accountants will find ways to convert betwee them.
If you’re really rich you don’t even need to do that, just take a bank loan secured on your company’s stock. Ask how Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t take a salary from the companies they founded.
"You think he's kidding when he talks about wanting to run again? You think he built a ballroom so that, you know, J.B. Pritzker, when he moves in, can have that ballroom? No, he built it for himself."
It is hard to see Donald and Melania tripping the light fantastic. I think he just likes marble and gold decorations.
I will need a similar amount for how the British Empire treated my antecedents in British India.
Introduced railways, common law, Westminster style democracy and stopped widows being thrown on funeral pyres?
Also the Bengal famine and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre which were two crimes against humanity.
You got off lightly said the Irish.
"The Brits partitioned MY country, too, you know!"
I won't ask how that went as it's well known. There seems to have been a number of geographically challenged civil servants in the Middle East too. And North Africa.
Since Portugal shipped more slaves across the Atlantic than Britain, presumably they owe even more than that to Brazil?
Perhaps Sir Lenny might like to address the Muslim world, as well, which enslaved more black people over a much longer period of time - and brutally castrated all the black males (which is why there are relatively few black people in MENA and the old Ottoman Empire)?
But of course he won’t do that, because it’s not politically correct, and the Muslim world would tell him to go jump in Lake Victoria because they’re not consumed with white guilt
Did I hear Kemi in her speech today say that borrowing all that money we borrow is stealing from our children and grandchildren, and then not point out that her party's policy is to carry on doing it with no plan for paying it back?
Actual tax cuts (or if it triggers someone less, reduced tax increases) paid for by fantasy spending cuts is what Hunt ended up doing. Having a double slice of chocolate cake because you have looked up where this weekend's parkrun is.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%. Stamp Duty 0.2%.
1% would allow you to abolish CGT and IHT too, which is what I'd do.
If you abolish CGT, then people like me will just convert all their income into capital gains.
I'm not sure what that means. You can't spend capital down the shops.
You can, however, spend capital gains. It's relatively easy for people who own businesses to choose whether to allow money to be extracted via share buybacks (capital gains), dividends or salary.
All forms of income should be treated as equally as possible, because otherwise sharp tax accountants will find ways to convert betwee them.
If you’re really rich you don’t even need to do that, just take a bank loan secured on your company’s stock. Ask how Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t take a salary from the companies they founded.
It's an effective strategy in the US but doesn't have much advantage in the UK: see the end of this article
All the Lou Grade ITC dramas, most notably the colour episodes of the Saint, the Avengers (I still have a thing for Linda Thorson) the Champions, the Protectors, Department S, Man In a Suitcase, the Zoo Gang, the Prisoner, the Baron and the Persuaders etc were all very well written and performed. Even if a street in London looked exactly the same as a Street in Monte Carlo. The only series that didn't really work was the Adventurer because Gene Barry couldn't work with any actor who was taller than him, and apparently he was short!
The Verity Lambert, Thames productions like the Sweeney and Minder all stand up to scrutiny too.
Verity Lambert wasn’t involved in The Sweeney
Some of those ITC series had some belting themes too.
Me and my two buddies used to drive around in my old Triumph Acclaim like we were Regan, Carter and Daniel’s fr9 the sweeney.
Happy days. I remember my mate came out of Shirley police station. Rolled over the bonnet for effect . He’d been called in to make peace with a whovian twat he’d upset. And we drove off up the M42 to the wood for some chips
Ace days
It’s a great series.
I can't remember where Shirley nick is. Was it on the Stratford Road opposite the road to Majors Green by Bristol Street Motors?
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
Since Portugal shipped more slaves across the Atlantic than Britain, presumably they owe even more than that to Brazil?
Perhaps Sir Lenny might like to address the Muslim world, as well, which enslaved more black people over a much longer period of time - and brutally castrated all the black males (which is why there are relatively few black people in MENA and the old Ottoman Empire)?
But of course he won’t do that, because it’s not politically correct, and the Muslim world would tell him to go jump in Lake Victoria because they’re not consumed with white guilt
Or, indeed, if we're looking solely at the *purchasers* of slaves, then why isn't Brazil getting most of the attention?
Since Portugal shipped more slaves across the Atlantic than Britain, presumably they owe even more than that to Brazil?
Perhaps Sir Lenny might like to address the Muslim world, as well, which enslaved more black people over a much longer period of time - and brutally castrated all the black males (which is why there are relatively few black people in MENA and the old Ottoman Empire)?
But of course he won’t do that, because it’s not politically correct, and the Muslim world would tell him to go jump in Lake Victoria because they’re not consumed with white guilt
Mauretania only abolished slavery as recently as 1981!
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
Did I hear Kemi in her speech today say that borrowing all that money we borrow is stealing from our children and grandchildren, and then not point out that her party's policy is to carry on doing it with no plan for paying it back?
You obviously missed the welfare, civil service and net zero cost scrapings she proposed
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
On the shadowy table that’s the £50 bottle of Monterey Pinot and the £100 pair of Nocs binoculars that was waiting in my goodie bag. Not that I’m vulgarly exulting or anything. Did I mention I love my job?
Also a can of water for sociological interest
Sea otter for scale (there actually is one in the picture but he’s about half a mile away)
Did I hear Kemi in her speech today say that borrowing all that money we borrow is stealing from our children and grandchildren, and then not point out that her party's policy is to carry on doing it with no plan for paying it back?
You obviously missed the welfare, civil service and net zero cost scrapings she proposed
Cost savings are the moon on a stick.
If she is going to cut the civil service, she needs to tell us what government is going to stop doing.
I will need a similar amount for how the British Empire treated my antecedents in British India.
Introduced railways, common law, Westminster style democracy and stopped widows being thrown on funeral pyres?
How many Viceroys were elected?
How many of the rulers of the kingdoms of India in the various dynasties *before* the empire were elected?
HYUFD was the one who mentioned "introducing democracy" (see above).
There are interesting questions around this: would India have become democratic if the UK (or France, or a.n.other) had not had it as part of an Empire? Or would India as it is now (*) be a complete country, or a series of smaller states (*) based on the Mughal/Maratha - style empires?
Yes, and the one several years later with Wogan where the audience is far less ready fo laugh at him and Wogan is made to look a bit of a heel. He claimed fo be a son of the Godhead in the initial interview. Theres a further interview with Gay Byrne ln the Late Late Show in Ireland a few weeks later where he expands on what he means by it. He states nobody is special and that its not a 'messiah' type thing he is claiming
If I were Ed Davey I would be worried about being seen less trustworthy than Boris Johnson. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These things all based on name recognition though to an extent. Name recognition means you top most popular and least popular both at same time making comparisons with lesser known people in the survey rather silly.
If I were Ed Davey I would be worried about being seen less trustworthy than Boris Johnson. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These things all based on name recognition though to an extent. Name recognition means you top most popular and least popular both at same time making comparisons with lesser known people in the survey rather silly.
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
Did I hear Kemi in her speech today say that borrowing all that money we borrow is stealing from our children and grandchildren, and then not point out that her party's policy is to carry on doing it with no plan for paying it back?
You obviously missed the welfare, civil service and net zero cost scrapings she proposed
Cost savings are the moon on a stick.
If she is going to cut the civil service, she needs to tell us what government is going to stop doing.
The welfare stuff was pretty nebulous.
When Labour backed down from any welfare cuts and when Reform wants to reverse the 2 child benefit cap it was a clear dividing line
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
If I were Ed Davey I would be worried about being seen less trustworthy than Boris Johnson. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's not what the poll says. These are head to heads, so Davey is seen as less trustworthy than Clare Balding, and Johnson is seen as less trustworthy than Stephen Fry.
The figures for politicians aren't comparable with one another as it depends who they are up against. Starmer gets an okay rating only because he's up against Jonathan Ross, who was involved in the "Sachsgate" scandal - well over 15 years ago now, but I suspect quite a few will remember it.
Yes, I wondered why the headline said what it did, when that obviously isn’t what is being measured.
If I were Ed Davey I would be worried about being seen less trustworthy than Boris Johnson. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
These things all based on name recognition though to an extent. Name recognition means you top most popular and least popular both at same time making comparisons with lesser known people in the survey rather silly.
You can trust Ed Davey to prat about in a pond.
If you go back to the General Election campaign, the stunt got attention in media and raised profile, and always came with good solid sound bites to camera, his personality, body language and honesty came across well. It worked well.
Yes, and the one several years later with Wogan where the audience is far less ready fo laugh at him and Wogan is made to look a bit of a heel. He claimed fo be a son of the Godhead in the initial interview. Theres a further interview with Gay Byrne ln the Late Late Show in Ireland a few weeks later where he expands on what he means by it. He states nobody is special and that its not a 'messiah' type thing he is claiming
But he also repeatedly compares himself to Jesus Christ - like when he says how it was slowly revealed to Jesus that he was the son of God.
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion. å There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
You don't need anything like 1%.
According to Savill's the total value of residential real estate in the UK is 9.1 trillion. 1% would therefore raise 91 billion.
Not only that, but you would also want to have higher rates for properties that are unoccupied more than (say) 180 days per year, to discourage people from having homes they don't live in. (Conveniently, those homes are often the most expensive and owned by non-UK taxpayers, so it's win-win.)
What does Council Tax currently generate? If that is included I think 1% would not be far off, especially when you provide for the inevitable special pleading for various groups such as @Sandpit’s key workers.
Council tax is equivalent to 0.5%. Stamp Duty 0.2%.
1% would allow you to abolish CGT and IHT too, which is what I'd do.
If you abolish CGT, then people like me will just convert all their income into capital gains.
I'm not sure what that means. You can't spend capital down the shops.
You can, however, spend capital gains. It's relatively easy for people who own businesses to choose whether to allow money to be extracted via share buybacks (capital gains), dividends or salary.
All forms of income should be treated as equally as possible, because otherwise sharp tax accountants will find ways to convert betwee them.
If you’re really rich you don’t even need to do that, just take a bank loan secured on your company’s stock. Ask how Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk don’t take a salary from the companies they founded.
It's an effective strategy in the US but doesn't have much advantage in the UK: see the end of this article
The Telegraph are talking about the moderately wealthy, those with £10m or so in assets.
When you get to the £10bn and above, the seriously wealthy, the maths are very different. The ultra wealthy are avoiding punitive rates of income tax, while also benefiting from the capital appreciation in their stocks.
Every so often, a Bezos or a Musk will sell $1bn of stock and pay the required CGT on it, clearing any loans and making new investments, plus a bit to cover the day-to-day spending for a few years.
I love Lenny, used to see him in Nostalgia and Comics in the early eighties reading the DC comics.
He used to be fab before reinventing himself as a race grifter
Tell him to GFH
Latecomer. I first watched him on Tiswas.
He has produced a fabulous body of work during his lifetime so I have to forgive any foibles in his old age.
Always amazes me that people who are so ardent about the adverse impacts of historic slavery don't ever bother themselves to do anything at all about the plight of people who are enslaved now.
Yes, and the one several years later with Wogan where the audience is far less ready fo laugh at him and Wogan is made to look a bit of a heel. He claimed fo be a son of the Godhead in the initial interview. Theres a further interview with Gay Byrne ln the Late Late Show in Ireland a few weeks later where he expands on what he means by it. He states nobody is special and that its not a 'messiah' type thing he is claiming
But he also repeatedly compares himself to Jesus Christ - like when he says how it was slowly revealed to Jesus that he was the son of God.
He does, yeah. My point I suppose was that he clarifies a lot in subsequent interviews, but its this Wogan Interview that is usually referenced.
Troubled ONS reveals £2bn borrowing blunder HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic] ... The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
I love Lenny, used to see him in Nostalgia and Comics in the early eighties reading the DC comics.
He used to be fab before reinventing himself as a race grifter
Tell him to GFH
I enjoyed him in Not the Nine O’Clock News.
Three of a kind? He wasn't in NTNON
Tiswas! Back before political correctness stopped Lenny Henry playing White characters like David Bellamy.
He was also a very good actor later on.
He does a loads of ads now particularly for Premier Inn so he doesn't really need any other work.
I had an uncomfortable moment with him a few years ago. I was with three clients having lunch at Grouchos and Henry was having lunch with Dawn French at another table. The female client wanted his autograph for her son so when the waiter came to our order she asked if he would mind asking him for an autograph?
The waiter said he was sorry but it was strictly forbidden for anyone to ask for autographs in the club.
She decided she would just go and chance it and ask him herself. She walked over and he said in an ever rising voice. "No you can't. NO NO NO NO. Just Go away......"
I can't think I've had a more embarrassing lunch anywhere. Ever! I thought I was going to be blackballed! (Though he was right and their privacy rules are well known)
Comments
Coppola's mistake with Apocalypse Now is the refusal to realise that the French Plantation section should have been pulled out and extended as its own separate piece.
Then he started making unfunny programmes. Then he started complaining about not getting commissioned, claiming it was racist. In fact, in was because he was no longer funny. It's been downhill from there.
It’s the same as remembering Carol Vorderman as someone famous for using her brain.
Snap. And I’m not the sort of person who’s been to elevenarife or the seventeen chapel but I do genuinely remember him from new Faces
https://x.com/jeremyclarkson/status/1975962168828071974
“Karl Starmer says he’s currently on the biggest ever trade mission to India. But that’s not strictly accurate is it... “
#TheStruggleIsReal
I also recall the gerrymandering at Westminster, with the deportation of proles etc to other London boroughs, and the division of Greater Glasgow so the rich suburbs in the outer ring didn't have to cross-subsidise the proles - a major reason for breaking up Strathclyde Region.
But all those here - and in other posts today - are good questions with interesting comments.
I accept White privilege as a thing, but I am not sure my predecessors saw much benefit. Paul Robeson saw us as his brothers in arms.
Ted Childs was also involved in The Sweeney.
Minder, especially the earlier episodes, is excellent.
On the shadowy table that’s the £50 bottle of Monterey Pinot and the £100 pair of Nocs binoculars that was waiting in my goodie bag. Not that I’m vulgarly exulting or anything. Did I mention I love my job?
Also a can of water for sociological interest
Sea otter for scale (there actually is one in the picture but he’s about half a mile away)
I just worry that an elected body with very little in the way tax raising powers is quite a weak one.
We do have one or two examples...
All forms of income should be treated as equally as possible, because otherwise sharp tax accountants will find ways to convert betwee them.
Or doesn't it work like that?
Newham raises about a quarter to a third of its budget requirement through the Council Tax - it's actually £110 million out of a budget of £394 million.
When considering how to reform local Government finance, property is an important element but not the only one. Newham gets 70% of its income from central Government, other authorities get a lot less. In Newham, the average property price is about £450k but that ranges from low value properties in East Ham and Plashet to multi million pound riverside apartments down by Custom House and Royal Albert Dock.
If a national property tax of 0.5% were introduced, my back of a Council Tax invoice calculation was Stodge Towers would pay about the same as we do under Council Tax but clearly the £5 million riverside apartment would pay a lot more - £25k per year (if my sums are right).
The central question is what we are trying to achieve - if the aim is to raise a greater proportion of the funds spent by local councils locally with less coming from central Government, fine. For Newham to achieve a 50/50 split between locally raised and nationally allocated finds, the Council would need to raise another £85 million through the Council Tax. I don't know how much the 0.5% national property tax would raise in Newham but it could be calculated.
The current level of Government largesse to councils is £65 billion so if that figure can be reduced via more funding raised from local property and land taxation, that would seem a sensible option to explore.
The big ticket expenditure items are, as we know, the social care provision for vulnerable adults AND children (the latter are too often forgotten). 52% of Newham's spending is on those two items (29% and 23% respectively). If this were to be funded via some form of national scheme (to be fair, we already pay a local precept on top of Council Tax) that would revolutionise the funding situation for the Council.
"You think he's kidding when he talks about wanting to run again? You think he built a ballroom so that, you know, J.B. Pritzker, when he moves in, can have that ballroom? No, he built it for himself."
Dyer was removed from his post after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and even Churchill condemned it
...
BUT
...
When it was suggested that he was thinking about the job, Sir James added: “Look I'd be stupid not to think about it, but I say my heart, my heart's in Essex.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/london-mayor-race-2028-james-cleverly-sadiq-khan-tories-b1251894.html
And the sea kayaking is world class. Genuinely. I’ve done a lot of kayaking now and here you can get so close to sea lions and otters it’s dazzling
It's a bit like saying that Adolf Hitler brought peace to Europe by shooting himself in the head.
And me
Can't have cheap tat like that lying around the flat
Truss's comments on Tommy Robinson I don't think fall into that category. I find it interesting, and not entirely unwelcome, that neither has chosen to issue an apology that they don't mean.
He was also a very good actor later on.
Interpreting that David Icke, liked by some American conspiracists, is turning against Trump and Maga.
https://x.com/davidicke/status/1975919762619367658
Three of a Kind with Ullman and Copperfield. When he was an ITV asset!
I won't ask how that went as it's well known. There seems to have been a number of geographically challenged civil servants in the Middle East too. And North Africa.
But of course he won’t do that, because it’s not politically correct, and the Muslim world would tell him to go jump in Lake Victoria because they’re not consumed with white guilt
Well...nI guess the BBC did broadcast his claim to be the son of God...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/investing/stocks-shares/buy-borrow-die-strategy-save-tax/
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25528723.snp-scheme-abolish-two-child-cap-open-applications-march/
HMRC error will boost Rachel Reeves’s hopes of boosting headroom in November Budget [sic]
...
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said it had been informed by the taxman of an error in data supplied by HMRC that meant cash receipts raised from the sales tax between April and August this year were £2.4bn higher than previously thought.
The ONS also reduced its estimate for borrowing in the previous financial year by a further £1bn.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/08/troubled-ons-reveals-2bn-borrowing-blunder/ (£££)
https://youtu.be/NapHiWsoFXI?si=SC5GOPN2DH-lcV0w
Not very good at math are they.
Using math is worthy of exile to ConHome.
If she is going to cut the civil service, she needs to tell us what government is going to stop doing.
The welfare stuff was pretty nebulous.
(*) Not including Pakistan and Bangladesh.
He claimed fo be a son of the Godhead in the initial interview. Theres a further interview with Gay Byrne ln the Late Late Show in Ireland a few weeks later where he expands on what he means by it.
He states nobody is special and that its not a 'messiah' type thing he is claiming
It's not a good word for having had a crown put on someone
When you get to the £10bn and above, the seriously wealthy, the maths are very different. The ultra wealthy are avoiding punitive rates of income tax, while also benefiting from the capital appreciation in their stocks.
Every so often, a Bezos or a Musk will sell $1bn of stock and pay the required CGT on it, clearing any loans and making new investments, plus a bit to cover the day-to-day spending for a few years.
I for one hope they succeed. I’m rooting for Lucy.
They are bound to make Niko a traitor.
I had an uncomfortable moment with him a few years ago. I was with three clients having lunch at Grouchos and Henry was having lunch with Dawn French at another table. The female client wanted his autograph for her son so when the waiter came to our order she asked if he would mind asking him for an autograph?
The waiter said he was sorry but it was strictly forbidden for anyone to ask for autographs in the club.
She decided she would just go and chance it and ask him herself. She walked over and he said in an ever rising voice. "No you can't. NO NO NO NO. Just Go away......"
I can't think I've had a more embarrassing lunch anywhere. Ever! I thought I was going to be blackballed! (Though he was right and their privacy rules are well known)
“ I can’t remember how to do parallel integration”
Does anyone know what “parallel integration” is? From context I assume it’s a term from their “Computer Systems Engineering” degree started 2003
I can’t find anything relevant on google and my tech knowledge from that era is pretty good