My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
In a remarkable display of either amnesia, carelessness or crassness, Reform’s campaign slogan, on display at last night IOW rally, is “Reform Will Fix It”….
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows: Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts. All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.
Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.
However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.
Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...
Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).
We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.
The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.
We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.
We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.
Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.
What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.
Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.
And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.
Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.
But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.
---
Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.
And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.
Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves
My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services
For the first 5 years but a 10 year proposal is being mooted. There are differences if you have children though. Did you not check this site?
The whole benefit/financial support system has a long list of exceptions so you will always have an opportunity to create a narrative depending on your viewpoint.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
Trouble is that there are two bits to the retirement age, and they both affect the state's finances.
There's the age where people get a state pension, and yes, the government can control that.
The trickier one is when well-paid people conclude that they have enough money to live off, thank you very much, and they are frankly bored and tired of work, certainly full-time work. If you have a house you have paid for and no kids to support, it's remarkable how much less money you need. (Those pension people who say that a comfortable retirement costs £44k a year are talking out of their bottoms, aren't they?) I don't see how you stop them, or even that the government should try. But it's still work not being done, taxes not being paid and the dependency ratio being tilted unhelpfully.
And its the people who can and do retire or reduce hours early who are saying we should keep increasing the pension age. Those without that choice and expected to keep working into their seventies don't like it and end up voting anti establishment, and a decent chunk of them end up on welfare anyway.
Whilst I am fortunate enough to be in the former camp, not sure it is fair to say the pension age needs to be increased without offering some restructuring in the latter groups favour too.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
Arguments about managing a state requiring 'starting from scratch' have a small problem.
In a remarkable display of either amnesia, carelessness or crassness, Reform’s campaign slogan, on display at last night IOW rally, is “Reform Will Fix It”….
🏇🏻 For all the tips from tipsters and experts, they can’t tell you that favourite will mess up 2nd last and 2nd favourite the last, when they had the winner beaten.
It all comes down to the race.
Undulating course, not flat one. It’s up in a place called Cots wolds, which is upland hills.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
Don't disagree but would suggest a variable age - related to the type of work and possibly to a health assessment if practicable.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows: Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts. All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.
Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.
However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.
Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...
Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).
We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.
The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.
We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.
We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.
Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.
What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.
Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.
And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.
Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.
But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.
---
Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.
And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.
Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves
My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services
The immigration/benefits nexus seems set up to mildly discourage the immigrants we might want and encourage the immigrants we don't want.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Or good quality healthcare is a desirable thing and high taxes are necessary to fund it. The choice should be presented, so people understand what they can and can't get and how much they would have pay for better outcomes, if that's what they want.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
Let's leave aside the migration question for now.
(1) There is no evidence that fracking in the UK is economic. None of the well drilled by Cuadrilla or iGas found commercial quantities of natural gas. Now, should there have been a ban? Nope. But that doesn't change the fundamental problem that (a) costs would be massively higher than the US because we're a small, densely populated country, and fracking takes a lot of space and equipment, and (b) there are no formations that look like being even vaguely close in terms of prospects to the ones that are economic.
(2) Defence cuts happened because there is financial pressure on the government. There is financial pressure on the government principally because we have an ageing population. Old people need to recieve pensions, and they cost a lot of money to look after via the social care network and the NHS. This pressure is not going away. And the ratio between the number of workers are the number of retirees is going to keep getting worse (especially in a world with zero or negative migration).
(3) We are not a rich country in terms of commodities. Now, we could have done a much better job managing the North Sea (and been more Norwegian), but even if we had done, it is highly unlikely that we could be anywhere near self sufficient in terms of energy currently. (That will change with renewables over time, but that is a twenty year story, not a two year one.) Irrespective, we are always going to need to import aluminium, copper, tungsten, and a million other things. And that has always been the case. What exactly is Ms Truss proposing that solves our dependence on getting commodities from abroad?
Now, did the UK government -particularly the one which Ms Truss was a leading member of- let immigration get completely out of control? Yes, it did.
But that doesn't stop the rest of her tweet from being utterly absurd.
Not to mention food, which you'd imagine pork-markets lady might have considered.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows: Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts. All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.
Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.
However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.
Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...
Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).
We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.
The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.
We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.
We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.
Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.
What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.
Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.
And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.
Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.
But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.
---
Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.
And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.
Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves
My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
We all discovered that during the pandemic.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
Let's leave aside the migration question for now.
(1) There is no evidence that fracking in the UK is economic. None of the well drilled by Cuadrilla or iGas found commercial quantities of natural gas. Now, should there have been a ban? Nope. But that doesn't change the fundamental problem that (a) costs would be massively higher than the US because we're a small, densely populated country, and fracking takes a lot of space and equipment, and (b) there are no formations that look like being even vaguely close in terms of prospects to the ones that are economic.
(2) Defence cuts happened because there is financial pressure on the government. There is financial pressure on the government principally because we have an ageing population. Old people need to recieve pensions, and they cost a lot of money to look after via the social care network and the NHS. This pressure is not going away. And the ratio between the number of workers are the number of retirees is going to keep getting worse (especially in a world with zero or negative migration).
(3) We are not a rich country in terms of commodities. Now, we could have done a much better job managing the North Sea (and been more Norwegian), but even if we had done, it is highly unlikely that we could be anywhere near self sufficient in terms of energy currently. (That will change with renewables over time, but that is a twenty year story, not a two year one.) Irrespective, we are always going to need to import aluminium, copper, tungsten, and a million other things. And that has always been the case. What exactly is Ms Truss proposing that solves our dependence on getting commodities from abroad?
Now, did the UK government -particularly the one which Ms Truss was a leading member of- let immigration get completely out of control? Yes, it did.
But that doesn't stop the rest of her tweet from being utterly absurd.
Not to mention food, which you'd imagine pork-markets lady might have considered.
Liz Truss does not get it, even remotely.
But, at a certain level, they are the right questions to ask. Assuming that global supply chains are never disrupted and run on free market principles is ridiculous.
From the OR point of view, what you need to do is look at what you need, and the various levels of reliability you require, together with costs of providing that reliability.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
Unless you are wholly dependent on state pension, most will still retire before then with private pensions. Unlikely a political party will get elected to raise retirement age to 70 either especially as the rise in life expectancy has now stalled or even started to fall
Latest craic from the MAGAs on the slaughtered Iranian schoolgirls is that the Ukrainians sold the Tomahawk that killed them to the Iranians. You couldn't make it up! Well, unless you're a MAGA obviously.
There are plenty of countries which don't have Tomahawk missiles - and only three which do, plus two who have been allowed to purchase them.
Of all the countries which don't have them, Ukraine is the one which doesn't have them most. We'd know if they did, as significant parts of the as yet untouched Russian military infrastructure would be severely fucked up by now. Possibly along with the Kremlin.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows: Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts. All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.
Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.
However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.
Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...
Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).
We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.
The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.
We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.
We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.
Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.
What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.
Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.
And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.
Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.
But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.
---
Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.
And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.
Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves
My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services
No recourse to public funds doesn’t mean what it says because many things provided by the state are not treated as being financed by public funds.
Sure, but by that logic there's a lot of Iranian families atm that have been treated to bombs financed by US and Israeli public funds.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
That's fair, but schools will be battling against the power of advertising (unless you ban advertising) and the ways in which the built environment is constructed (which favours cars), and so then to an extent it doesn't matter what people are taught if the environment is hostile to making the right choices.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows: Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts. All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.
Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.
However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.
Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...
Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).
We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.
The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.
We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.
We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.
Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.
What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.
Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.
And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.
Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.
But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.
---
Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.
And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.
Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves
My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services
NHS, state education etc still accessible by them
NHS is normally a surcharge for foreign nationals isn't it ?
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
Unless you are wholly dependent on state pension, most will still retire before then with private pensions. Unlikely a political party will get elected to raise retirement age to 70 either especially as the rise in life expectancy has now stalled or even started to fall
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
A lot of health issues unless fixed result in early need for social care.
So don’t make the assumption that you can save the NHS money, it may just be shifting the cost to a slightly different budget
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
That's fair, but schools will be battling against the power of advertising (unless you ban advertising) and the ways in which the built environment is constructed (which favours cars), and so then to an extent it doesn't matter what people are taught if the environment is hostile to making the right choices.
I don't think we need to give up but should do what we can. If you educate people to care and understand about this as children, including the mendacious power of advertising, perhaps when they reach adulthood they could cope with voting in restrictions on food advertising without having to moan about the nanny state interfering.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
We all discovered that during the pandemic.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
Similarly take some of the more obscure old maths like algebra out, if its still taught and start to teach financial planning and cash management.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
She does have at least half a point. I was listening to a IFS (so hardly right wing extremist) podcast, and they noted that the OBR's migration modeling works roughly as follows: Take projected number of immigrants, calculate their projected incomes, calculate tax due, add to projected government tax receipts. All projected costs of this immigration are assumed to already be included in the government's spending plans, thus no adjustment is made for these costs.
Now, in a "steady state" sort of a way, this kind of works - if departmental spending has the correct amount in to cover the cost of immigration, one has to include the additional tax generated from immigration somewhere.
However, it means that plugging in different numbers of immigrants into the OBR model is meaningless, as it changes the projected tax take, but not the projected costs. This pretty much bakes into the forecasting model a presumption that lots of immigration is double plus good, and low immigration is very bad.
Obviously, it tells us nothing at-all about if migration is actually good news for the exchequer, but it means the treasury definitely wants lots of it anyway...
Here's the square that needs circling (so to speak).
We're all living longer. We have a birthrate well below replacement. The cost of looking after the old falls on those of working age. And a 80 year old has something like 10x the costs to the NHS of a 30 year old.
The greater the number of retirees relative to the number of workers, the more of each worker's output needs to be spent on retirees.
We need to square that with productivity, which can be encouraged via highly skilled migration as countries like Switzerland seek.
We do not square that with unproductive minimum wage jobs.
Switzerland and Singapore imports lots of minimum wage people too: the cooks in restaurants and the nannies and the cleaners, they're not Swiss nationals.
What they do a really good job in doing is making sure that their own citizens have better skills.
Switzerland offers no visa pathways AFAIK for minimum wage people.
And Singapore only does so with pathways that never lead to citizenship AFAIK.
Indeed. And I've said in the past that the UK is very unusual (and basically wrong) in not having two classes of visas: immigrant and non-immigrant. My current US visa (an O-1) is a non-immigrant one, with no path to permanent residency and/or citizenship.
But that doesn't stop the fact that the Switzerland and Singapore are absolutely full of low wage, low skill immigrants. It's just that they are going home aftter five years.
---
Of course, even with non-immigrant visas, some people are going to end up staying, thanks to marriage and the like.
And Singapore does have a path to citizenship (or for an immigrant visa that in turn leads there), but it does require you to get up to the level of education that you would need for an immigrant visa. So, what you have is a fair number of people who turn up on non-immigrant visas, and then take courses at Singapore University, and then change their status.
Immigrants also cannot claim benefits or use public services in Singapore, they have to support themselves
My wife's passport/visa when she first came to the UK contained the line: No Recourse To Public Services
That's a bit harsh, preventing her from reporting a crime, taking the Tube or crossing the road.
Mind you, logically she didn't have to pay the taxes that fund those services either so actually it's quite a tempting bargain at the current extortionate rates.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
Unless you are wholly dependent on state pension, most will still retire before then with private pensions. Unlikely a political party will get elected to raise retirement age to 70 either especially as the rise in life expectancy has now stalled or even started to fall
DId the Coalition say they would rise pension age prior to them being elected?
And anyway, the current timetable is to increase penion age to 69 by 2040. It would only need one additional year increase to match Denmark.
Cameron failed to get a majority in 2010 so had to form the Coalition with the LDs. 70 symbolically is far worse for swing voters than a retirement age in their 60s still
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
Let's leave aside the migration question for now.
(1) There is no evidence that fracking in the UK is economic. None of the well drilled by Cuadrilla or iGas found commercial quantities of natural gas. Now, should there have been a ban? Nope. But that doesn't change the fundamental problem that (a) costs would be massively higher than the US because we're a small, densely populated country, and fracking takes a lot of space and equipment, and (b) there are no formations that look like being even vaguely close in terms of prospects to the ones that are economic.
(2) Defence cuts happened because there is financial pressure on the government. There is financial pressure on the government principally because we have an ageing population. Old people need to recieve pensions, and they cost a lot of money to look after via the social care network and the NHS. This pressure is not going away. And the ratio between the number of workers are the number of retirees is going to keep getting worse (especially in a world with zero or negative migration).
(3) We are not a rich country in terms of commodities. Now, we could have done a much better job managing the North Sea (and been more Norwegian), but even if we had done, it is highly unlikely that we could be anywhere near self sufficient in terms of energy currently. (That will change with renewables over time, but that is a twenty year story, not a two year one.) Irrespective, we are always going to need to import aluminium, copper, tungsten, and a million other things. And that has always been the case. What exactly is Ms Truss proposing that solves our dependence on getting commodities from abroad?
Now, did the UK government -particularly the one which Ms Truss was a leading member of- let immigration get completely out of control? Yes, it did.
But that doesn't stop the rest of her tweet from being utterly absurd.
Not to mention food, which you'd imagine pork-markets lady might have considered.
Liz Truss does not get it, even remotely.
But, at a certain level, they are the right questions to ask. Assuming that global supply chains are never disrupted and run on free market principles is ridiculous..
Is anyone really assuming that ? I seriously doubt it. Particularly after the experience of the last few years.
Then UK made its problems. in that respect, somewhat larger when it divorced itself from Europe. Truss is simply restating problems which she was, while in office under various governments, partly responsible for. She's not presenting any significant solutions.
There is stuff which is consensus across the political spectrum (and also runs into opposition) - for example the government's current plans to make it far easier and cheaper to build nuclear power stations. No doubt Truss would agree with that, but so do I, and (if he is sincere) so does Starmer.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
We all discovered that during the pandemic.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
Similarly take some of the more obscure old maths like algebra out, if its still taught and start to teach financial planning and cash management.
Home economics is another hot topic.
I probably disagree with you on almost everything, but agree with you on home economics.
Teach compound interest, mortgages, student loans, pensions, stock market investments… but also more day-to-day stuff like bulk purchasing and energy usage.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
The funny thing is that there is a kernel of truth in there somewhere.
The infamous Treasury Model that says that any investment outside London is a looser, for example.
Many of the models are childishly linear. And many of the policies are reductionist and take no account of the inevitable effects.
For example - politicians handed the right to grant visas to companies. In effect.
Then were astonished when companies started selling visas. In a trade that escalated in criminality.
I have a strong suspicion that, in many of these cases, the model is there to support the policy rather than the other way round.
Which is why it’s next to impossible to challenge, because nobody in the power structure actually wants to officially “know” that the models are wrong. If they ‘’knew” officially, they’d have to change policy & that would (at the least) cost political capital that they’d rather spend on other projects.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
I don't even know where to start with this.
The funny thing is that there is a kernel of truth in there somewhere.
The infamous Treasury Model that says that any investment outside London is a looser, for example.
Many of the models are childishly linear. And many of the policies are reductionist and take no account of the inevitable effects.
For example - politicians handed the right to grant visas to companies. In effect.
Then were astonished when companies started selling visas. In a trade that escalated in criminality.
I have a strong suspicion that, in many of these cases, the model is there to support the policy rather than the other way round.
Which is why it’s next to impossible to challenge, because nobody in the power structure actually wants to officially “know” that the models are wrong. If they ‘’knew” officially, they’d have to change policy & that would (at the least) cost political capital that they’d rather spend on other projects.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
The danger of life expectancy as 'how long can I expect to live" is that for most of human history its been skewed by high infant mortality. Thus people assume that there were no old people but a life expectancy of 50 didn't mean that no-one lived past 50.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
That's fair, but schools will be battling against the power of advertising (unless you ban advertising) and the ways in which the built environment is constructed (which favours cars), and so then to an extent it doesn't matter what people are taught if the environment is hostile to making the right choices.
I don't think we need to give up but should do what we can. If you educate people to care and understand about this as children, including the mendacious power of advertising, perhaps when they reach adulthood they could cope with voting in restrictions on food advertising without having to moan about the nanny state interfering.
I'm not giving up, but it's about how do you fix the problem. I don't think Britain is unhealthy because people are ignorant and choosing to be unhealthy. It's because of the environment that they are making those choices in.
I think it is primarily a question about changing the infrastructure. If you make it an issue of education and personal choice then I think you fail.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
My point is that there is a difference between actuarial life expectancy at age 65 than to life expectancy at birth, for people born in the same year.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
We all discovered that during the pandemic.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
Similarly take some of the more obscure old maths like algebra out, if its still taught and start to teach financial planning and cash management.
I followed up the query on "cost of providing a protected stopping place at a bus stop", and it's a right rabbit hole.
I was referred to chapter 3 of the "Traffic Signs Manual". That chapter has 250 dense pages on it's own. And that is the "easy to read" version. There is a "Bus Stop Clearway", and several other items.
The layout is diagram 1025.1 from the The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016. I think that is - yes - more than 1000 diagrams. And that is multi volume.
I don't have the time this month to go further on this.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
That's fair, but schools will be battling against the power of advertising (unless you ban advertising) and the ways in which the built environment is constructed (which favours cars), and so then to an extent it doesn't matter what people are taught if the environment is hostile to making the right choices.
I don't think we need to give up but should do what we can. If you educate people to care and understand about this as children, including the mendacious power of advertising, perhaps when they reach adulthood they could cope with voting in restrictions on food advertising without having to moan about the nanny state interfering.
I'm not giving up, but it's about how do you fix the problem. I don't think Britain is unhealthy because people are ignorant and choosing to be unhealthy. It's because of the environment that they are making those choices in.
I think it is primarily a question about changing the infrastructure. If you make it an issue of education and personal choice then I think you fail.
Strongly disagree, grew up in an educated household and had very poor understanding of nutrition and health. Would have considered orange juice healthy for example, or brown bread, as the message received was orange juice > fizzy drinks or brown bread > white bread, rather than any holistic understanding of how different foods impact the body.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
We all discovered that during the pandemic.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
Similarly take some of the more obscure old maths like algebra out, if its still taught and start to teach financial planning and cash management.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
We all discovered that during the pandemic.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
Similarly take some of the more obscure old maths like algebra out, if its still taught and start to teach financial planning and cash management.
Home economics is another hot topic.
A post I can agree with
To think second in importance to the Bible were our Log Tables and Slide Rulers
All over the world, BullShitMeters have broken into a million pieces.
It's nuts. Iran's nuclear programme was "completely obliterated" but also two weeks away from a bomb. Iran was about to attack basically everyone if you believe Trump. Also Iran used a Tomahawk missile to attack a school.
This isn't even lying, it's not competent enough to be lying. This is a madman babbling.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
You could set an age of say 100. People who can't work until then have Universal Credit and the few that get to 100 can have a state pension. Essentially making any state benefit means tested. Not sure if the boomers would vote for it though.
“Pessimism about Iran’s fate is now baked into Chinese assessments of the Middle East,” writes Yun Sun. “China’s disillusionment with Iran’s leaders means that Beijing is not inherently opposed to regime change.”
As shipping AIS followers in New York and London realise that the Straight of Hormuz is actually open, it’s just that ships are running it at night with their transponders off.
Latest craic from the MAGAs on the slaughtered Iranian schoolgirls is that the Ukrainians sold the Tomahawk that killed them to the Iranians. You couldn't make it up! Well, unless you're a MAGA obviously.
There are plenty of countries which don't have Tomahawk missiles - and only three which do, plus two who have been allowed to purchase them.
Of all the countries which don't have them, Ukraine is the one which doesn't have them most. We'd know if they did, as significant parts of the as yet untouched Russian military infrastructure would be severely fucked up by now. Possibly along with the Kremlin.
Trump has set off his lunatic followers.
They can never, EVER, admit they are wrong.
It has been Trump's guiding light throughout. Regardless of the overwhelming evidence, bullshit it out.
As shipping AIS followers in New York and London realise that the Straight of Hormuz is actually open, it’s just that ships are running it at night with their transponders off.
Crisis what crisis
Nigel and Kemi will be distraught.
Their messaging has been so so nieve.
Nigel changes tack out of the wind but that's more down to being ignored by Donald.
I followed up the query on "cost of providing a protected stopping place at a bus stop", and it's a right rabbit hole.
I was referred to chapter 3 of the "Traffic Signs Manual". That chapter has 250 dense pages on it's own. And that is the "easy to read" version. There is a "Bus Stop Clearway", and several other items.
The layout is diagram 1025.1 from the The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016. I think that is - yes - more than 1000 diagrams. And that is multi volume.
I don't have the time this month to go further on this.
The 2016 version has been changed along with some of the other chapters. I wish I didn't know this.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
We all discovered that during the pandemic.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
Similarly take some of the more obscure old maths like algebra out, if its still taught and start to teach financial planning and cash management.
Home economics is another hot topic.
A post I can agree with
Algebra is 'obscure'? How would you teach financial planning and cash management without algebra?
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
The danger of life expectancy as 'how long can I expect to live" is that for most of human history its been skewed by high infant mortality. Thus people assume that there were no old people but a life expectancy of 50 didn't mean that no-one lived past 50.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
In pre-industrial societies, life expectancy at birth was about 25. That's quite a consistent number.
But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of children would die before 14. Then, 10% of women would die from childbirth. And a similar proportion of men would die in wars, accidents on farms, at sea etc. (Natural disasters tended to carry off far more people than in modern rich countries, as well).
Avoid those risks, and you could probably expect to reach 60 or so.
A post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting. It has therefore been deleted.
Yet still not admiting that this was an Islamist terror attack aimed at those protesting Mamdani.
It didn't fail to reflect the gravity of the situation. It failed to accurately communicate who was responsible, who the intended victims were and where the blame for the attempted terrorist attack lay. In other words you didn't accidentally downplay the seriousness of it, you deliberately misrepresented what happened to conceal the truth from the public.
As shipping AIS followers in New York and London realise that the Straight of Hormuz is actually open, it’s just that ships are running it at night with their transponders off.
As they would have known if they had been reading Yokel here...
I doubt that the Iranians have any working radar that tells them what is going on.
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
The danger of life expectancy as 'how long can I expect to live" is that for most of human history its been skewed by high infant mortality. Thus people assume that there were no old people but a life expectancy of 50 didn't mean that no-one lived past 50.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
In pre-industrial societies, life expectancy at birth was about 25. That's quite a consistent number.
But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of children would die before 14. Then, 10% of women would die from childbirth. And a similar proportion of men would die in wars, accidents on farms, at sea etc. (Natural disasters tended to carry off far more people than in modern rich countries, as well).
Avoid those risks, and you could probably expect to reach 60 or so.
Shakespeare didn't appear to suggest that there were no 'greybeards'. So that must have been acceptable to his audiences.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
The danger of life expectancy as 'how long can I expect to live" is that for most of human history its been skewed by high infant mortality. Thus people assume that there were no old people but a life expectancy of 50 didn't mean that no-one lived past 50.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
In pre-industrial societies, life expectancy at birth was about 25. That's quite a consistent number.
But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of children would die before 14. Then, 10% of women would die from childbirth. And a similar proportion of men would die in wars, accidents on farms, at sea etc. (Natural disasters tended to carry off far more people than in modern rich countries, as well).
Avoid those risks, and you could probably expect to reach 60 or so.
Shakespeare didn't appear to suggest that there were no 'greybeards'. So that must have been acceptable to his audiences.
Society would seem much more youthful (the median age was about 21 in his time, compared to 41 now), but yes, there would be greybeards,
As shipping AIS followers in New York and London realise that the Straight of Hormuz is actually open, it’s just that ships are running it at night with their transponders off.
Crisis what crisis
Nigel and Kemi will be distraught.
Their messaging has been so so nieve.
Nigel changes tack out of the wind but that's more down to being ignored by Donald.
Naive is the word you are looking for
Nobody wants this war to continue but I urge caution before putting out the bunting
Mind you, Starmer still has the Mandelson scancal and May elections to face, following which we should have a better understanding of the political landscape
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
Let's leave aside the migration question for now.
(1) There is no evidence that fracking in the UK is economic. None of the well drilled by Cuadrilla or iGas found commercial quantities of natural gas. Now, should there have been a ban? Nope. But that doesn't change the fundamental problem that (a) costs would be massively higher than the US because we're a small, densely populated country, and fracking takes a lot of space and equipment, and (b) there are no formations that look like being even vaguely close in terms of prospects to the ones that are economic.
(2) Defence cuts happened because there is financial pressure on the government. There is financial pressure on the government principally because we have an ageing population. Old people need to recieve pensions, and they cost a lot of money to look after via the social care network and the NHS. This pressure is not going away. And the ratio between the number of workers are the number of retirees is going to keep getting worse (especially in a world with zero or negative migration).
(3) We are not a rich country in terms of commodities. Now, we could have done a much better job managing the North Sea (and been more Norwegian), but even if we had done, it is highly unlikely that we could be anywhere near self sufficient in terms of energy currently. (That will change with renewables over time, but that is a twenty year story, not a two year one.) Irrespective, we are always going to need to import aluminium, copper, tungsten, and a million other things. And that has always been the case. What exactly is Ms Truss proposing that solves our dependence on getting commodities from abroad?
Now, did the UK government -particularly the one which Ms Truss was a leading member of- let immigration get completely out of control? Yes, it did.
But that doesn't stop the rest of her tweet from being utterly absurd.
Not to mention food, which you'd imagine pork-markets lady might have considered.
Liz Truss does not get it, even remotely.
But, at a certain level, they are the right questions to ask. Assuming that global supply chains are never disrupted and run on free market principles is ridiculous..
Is anyone really assuming that ? I seriously doubt it. Particularly after the experience of the last few years.
Then UK made its problems. in that respect, somewhat larger when it divorced itself from Europe. Truss is simply restating problems which she was, while in office under various governments, partly responsible for. She's not presenting any significant solutions.
There is stuff which is consensus across the political spectrum (and also runs into opposition) - for example the government's current plans to make it far easier and cheaper to build nuclear power stations. No doubt Truss would agree with that, but so do I, and (if he is sincere) so does Starmer.
On PPE
1) disposable PPE is the chosen option 2) during the pandemic usage went up by orders of magnitude. 3) PPE has a shelf life 4) so a stockpile of PPE for a pandemic would require vast amounts to be thrown away each year at huge cost. 5) a domestic manufacturing capacity with the flexibility to suddenly make an order of magnitude more would cost vast amounts 6) and you would need all the precursor materials as well 7) can’t possibly use non-disposable PPE as standard. Because of memories of gas masks from 1953, apparently. 8) the problem is too big
So the plan for the next pandemic is to place really big orders with Chinese manufacturers.
Yes, really
Or shells for artillery we don’t make either.
Or take the whole steel debate. Virgin steel is vital for X,Y and Z. But even if we maintained the furnaces in the U.K. we would need to import ore.
The questions that weren’t asked - could we learn to make X, Y and Z from scrap? The history of steel is full of such leaps.. should we stockpile steel instead?
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Five by-elections the day after tomorrow. Three LD defences, in what look like strong LD areas, one Green and one Indie. Only the Ind, in North Kesteven, Lincs, looks to be in Reform territory, although one of the LD seats is in Liverpool.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
The danger of life expectancy as 'how long can I expect to live" is that for most of human history its been skewed by high infant mortality. Thus people assume that there were no old people but a life expectancy of 50 didn't mean that no-one lived past 50.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
In pre-industrial societies, life expectancy at birth was about 25. That's quite a consistent number.
But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of children would die before 14. Then, 10% of women would die from childbirth. And a similar proportion of men would die in wars, accidents on farms, at sea etc. (Natural disasters tended to carry off far more people than in modern rich countries, as well).
Avoid those risks, and you could probably expect to reach 60 or so.
As a rule Infant mortality has been excluded from life expectency figures when studying changes since the Victorian period. Tis is the norm in such studies.
As shipping AIS followers in New York and London realise that the Straight of Hormuz is actually open, it’s just that ships are running it at night with their transponders off.
As they would have known if they had been reading Yokel here...
I doubt that the Iranians have any working radar that tells them what is going on.
I wonder if their own tankers are using it too?
It is quite possible that *part of* the IRGC is making statements that the rest of the Iranian government is ignoring. After all, the IRGC issued as statement saying “ignore that government guy”
And it’s much more convent for everyone for the tankers to roll through, than if they really, really stopped.
From a mild acquaintance with the Middle East, the following film quote comes to Mind
“Guangzhou is a chemical weapons plant masquerading as a fertilizer plant. We know this. The Chinese know that we know. But we make-believe that we don't know and the Chinese make-believe that they believe that we don't know, but know that we know. Everybody knows."
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Seems MOE at best
Some interestimg comment in the press from Lord Hayward today (Guardian i think) on the trad parties canvassers for the locals reporting increased 'Anyone but reform' responses. We may see some surprising results in May. Ive got Norfolk ready for analysis of course but i have Solihull earmarked as a bellweather of vote holding up-iness
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Teach cooking, diet, fitness and health at school - properly as core elements not add ons to be covered in a class or two. Subsidise adult classes in those areas we do academia for adults too.
I think you have to build things in so that they happen without people noticing. So if you have a walking/cycling-centred transport system, and you get more people travelling under their own steam rather than driving, they will become healthier without having to learn to be healthy, or choose to do fitness things. Simple things, like making it easier to take bicycles onto trains, so that it's easy for people to do the healthy thing, could also go a long way.
I don't understand why we teach our children 100x more about geography, history, French, physics, chemistry etc than we do about nutrition, health and how to live to not only give the individual far better quality of life but also makes it cheaper for the taxpayer too.
That's fair, but schools will be battling against the power of advertising (unless you ban advertising) and the ways in which the built environment is constructed (which favours cars), and so then to an extent it doesn't matter what people are taught if the environment is hostile to making the right choices.
I don't think we need to give up but should do what we can. If you educate people to care and understand about this as children, including the mendacious power of advertising, perhaps when they reach adulthood they could cope with voting in restrictions on food advertising without having to moan about the nanny state interfering.
I'm not giving up, but it's about how do you fix the problem. I don't think Britain is unhealthy because people are ignorant and choosing to be unhealthy. It's because of the environment that they are making those choices in.
I think it is primarily a question about changing the infrastructure. If you make it an issue of education and personal choice then I think you fail.
Strongly disagree, grew up in an educated household and had very poor understanding of nutrition and health. Would have considered orange juice healthy for example, or brown bread, as the message received was orange juice > fizzy drinks or brown bread > white bread, rather than any holistic understanding of how different foods impact the body.
Indeed. And decades of claims, driven by big businesses, that it was fats rather than refined carbs that were the real problem has not helped at all.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
Unless you are wholly dependent on state pension, most will still retire before then with private pensions. Unlikely a political party will get elected to raise retirement age to 70 either especially as the rise in life expectancy has now stalled or even started to fall
DId the Coalition say they would rise pension age prior to them being elected?
And anyway, the current timetable is to increase penion age to 69 by 2040. It would only need one additional year increase to match Denmark.
Cameron failed to get a majority in 2010 so had to form the Coalition with the LDs. 70 symbolically is far worse for swing voters than a retirement age in their 60s still
Neither of them had increasing pension age in their manifestos. So your argument "Unlikely a political party will get elected to raise retirement age to 70" is immaterial. It can be done without having to be in the manifesto. All the more since it is only a change by 1 year from the current plan.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
The danger of life expectancy as 'how long can I expect to live" is that for most of human history its been skewed by high infant mortality. Thus people assume that there were no old people but a life expectancy of 50 didn't mean that no-one lived past 50.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
In pre-industrial societies, life expectancy at birth was about 25. That's quite a consistent number.
But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of children would die before 14. Then, 10% of women would die from childbirth. And a similar proportion of men would die in wars, accidents on farms, at sea etc. (Natural disasters tended to carry off far more people than in modern rich countries, as well).
Avoid those risks, and you could probably expect to reach 60 or so.
As a rule Infant mortality has been excluded from life expectency figures when studying changes since the Victorian period. Tis is the norm in such studies.
I hope your post indicates that you plan to retire before 67 rather than after!! If not, and it's not too late, can I recommend a pensions advisor?
We've all worked with greedy b******ds who wouldn't let go and carried on to the detriment of their younger colleagues development and financial prospects, but you're a long time dead and ill health can ruin retirement plans.
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Five by-elections the day after tomorrow. Three LD defences, in what look like strong LD areas, one Green and one Indie. Only the Ind, in North Kesteven, Lincs, looks to be in Reform territory, although one of the LD seats is in Liverpool.
I csn see 3 x hold and 1 x gain LD there. They will be weighing the vote in Westmorland Sleaford isnt terrible for the Cons per se (tories in Lincs prob 'strongest' in Sleaford, Grantham, Gainsborough) but theyll lose more to Lincs Ind than Reform so fingers crossed for the Indy
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
If healthy life expectancy increases then we can (in theory) escape that problem.
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
Yes. Healthcare inflation has been running above normal inflation for decades, because, as you say, healthcare keeps finding new ways to fix us, most of which involve expensive new drugs. I suspect that's particularly driven by the US market.
Healthcare research and new drug development is usually focused on increasing quality-adjusted life years (QALY), but that often means helping retired people live longer. Which is a good thing! But you could get the government to push more research money into treating conditions that affect working-age adults.: see if that is popular with the electorate.
Life expectancy is one thing. Healthy life expectancy another. We are simply extending the length of end of life sickness in the main.
I don't believe that's true. Things such as knee and hip replacement are giving older people much better quality of life. Cancer treatments have improved so that more than 50% of newly diagnosed cancer patients will live more than 10 years.
It's starting to dawn on him that this is a debacle from which he needs to distant himself.
They probably embarked on Operation Epstein Fury because they managed to convince themselves it would be easy. See also the SMO, Suez and Leeds Utd's 2000/2001 Champions League campaign
It's starting to dawn on him that this is a debacle from which he needs to distant himself.
They probably embarked on Operation Epstein Fury because they managed to convince themselves it would be easy. See also the SMO, Suez and Leeds Utd's 2000/2001 Champions League campaign
Wat da ya mean Iran isn't Venezuela!! Get me a diet coke now.
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Five by-elections the day after tomorrow. Three LD defences, in what look like strong LD areas, one Green and one Indie. Only the Ind, in North Kesteven, Lincs, looks to be in Reform territory, although one of the LD seats is in Liverpool.
I csn see 3 x hold and 1 x gain LD there. They will be weighing the vote in Westmorland Sleaford isnt terrible for the Cons per se (tories in Lincs prob 'strongest' in Sleaford, Grantham, Gainsborough) but theyll lose more to Lincs Ind than Reform so fingers crossed for the Indy
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
There is something in what you say, but rather than use life expectancy of birth when comparing, it should be life expectency at retirement age.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
The danger of life expectancy as 'how long can I expect to live" is that for most of human history its been skewed by high infant mortality. Thus people assume that there were no old people but a life expectancy of 50 didn't mean that no-one lived past 50.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
In pre-industrial societies, life expectancy at birth was about 25. That's quite a consistent number.
But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of children would die before 14. Then, 10% of women would die from childbirth. And a similar proportion of men would die in wars, accidents on farms, at sea etc. (Natural disasters tended to carry off far more people than in modern rich countries, as well).
Avoid those risks, and you could probably expect to reach 60 or so.
Shakespeare didn't appear to suggest that there were no 'greybeards'. So that must have been acceptable to his audiences.
Life expectancy is one thing. Healthy life expectancy another. We are simply extending the length of end of life sickness in the main.
Can I just gently say when you are old as I am at 82 and have had various health scares, I and my family are very grateful for being given more time no matter my frailties and I and they prefer we live as long as we can
“Pessimism about Iran’s fate is now baked into Chinese assessments of the Middle East,” writes Yun Sun. “China’s disillusionment with Iran’s leaders means that Beijing is not inherently opposed to regime change.”
= Iran getting nukes isn't worth China losing markets in a recession/slump. It's in enough trouble as it is.
Labour need to explain the disgraceful hand they were left.
The problem with attacking the Tories from the right is that there is an alternative right-wing party waiting in the wings, albeit now handicapped by having too many Tories in it.
My dad is in his 80s and still works full time. But it isn't a physical job. Maybe it's time to have different retirement ages depending on the type of job you do.
Yes, the retirement age needs to rise.
That doesn't -unfortunately- stop the cost of healthcare continuing to rise, but it at least partially ameliorates the issue.
In 1947 average male life expectancy was 64 years and 7 months. Retirement age was 65 (someone had a sense of humour) Today my life expectancy is 80 and my current retirement age is 67.
I doubt very much if I will retire at 67 but regardless, the current situation is untenable.
I have worked with people offshore who were in their early 70s.
We should raise retirement age to 70 with exceptions for physically demanding jobs. This is already the plan in Denmark.
Unless you are wholly dependent on state pension, most will still retire before then with private pensions. Unlikely a political party will get elected to raise retirement age to 70 either especially as the rise in life expectancy has now stalled or even started to fall
DId the Coalition say they would rise pension age prior to them being elected?
And anyway, the current timetable is to increase penion age to 69 by 2040. It would only need one additional year increase to match Denmark.
Cameron failed to get a majority in 2010 so had to form the Coalition with the LDs. 70 symbolically is far worse for swing voters than a retirement age in their 60s still
Neither of them had increasing pension age in their manifestos. So your argument "Unlikely a political party will get elected to raise retirement age to 70" is immaterial. It can be done without having to be in the manifesto. All the more since it is only a change by 1 year from the current plan.
I've got to admit that both my elder son and my son-in-law, both in their early sixties are 'muttering' about having to wait until 67 for their pensions. Neither are exactly pushed for money but I think they feel it would be good to have it, both having worked since 16. (Although son did have a break to go to Uni in his mid-twenties.)
Life expectancy is one thing. Healthy life expectancy another. We are simply extending the length of end of life sickness in the main.
I don't believe that's true. Things such as knee and hip replacement are giving older people much better quality of life. Cancer treatments have improved so that more than 50% of newly diagnosed cancer patients will live more than 10 years.
Fundamental problem is all the models used by British state (economic model, energy model) are deterministic.
They don't take into account the value of options or sovereign capability.
They essentially bake in globalist assumptions (migration is a positive, Britain will always be able to get goods/commodities at affordable price, history has ended).
These models are hard wired into legislation and unaccountable bodies (such as the OBR and CCC).
It's one of the reasons it is so hard to get policies like fracking/migration cuts/defence projects through, you are fighting these projections.
We need to start from scratch. We should be basing policy on what Britain needs to thrive in all scenarios - not just the globalist utopian one.
Let's leave aside the migration question for now.
(1) There is no evidence that fracking in the UK is economic. None of the well drilled by Cuadrilla or iGas found commercial quantities of natural gas. Now, should there have been a ban? Nope. But that doesn't change the fundamental problem that (a) costs would be massively higher than the US because we're a small, densely populated country, and fracking takes a lot of space and equipment, and (b) there are no formations that look like being even vaguely close in terms of prospects to the ones that are economic.
(2) Defence cuts happened because there is financial pressure on the government. There is financial pressure on the government principally because we have an ageing population. Old people need to recieve pensions, and they cost a lot of money to look after via the social care network and the NHS. This pressure is not going away. And the ratio between the number of workers are the number of retirees is going to keep getting worse (especially in a world with zero or negative migration).
(3) We are not a rich country in terms of commodities. Now, we could have done a much better job managing the North Sea (and been more Norwegian), but even if we had done, it is highly unlikely that we could be anywhere near self sufficient in terms of energy currently. (That will change with renewables over time, but that is a twenty year story, not a two year one.) Irrespective, we are always going to need to import aluminium, copper, tungsten, and a million other things. And that has always been the case. What exactly is Ms Truss proposing that solves our dependence on getting commodities from abroad?
Now, did the UK government -particularly the one which Ms Truss was a leading member of- let immigration get completely out of control? Yes, it did.
But that doesn't stop the rest of her tweet from being utterly absurd.
Not to mention food, which you'd imagine pork-markets lady might have considered.
Liz Truss does not get it, even remotely.
But, at a certain level, they are the right questions to ask. Assuming that global supply chains are never disrupted and run on free market principles is ridiculous..
Is anyone really assuming that ? I seriously doubt it. Particularly after the experience of the last few years.
Then UK made its problems. in that respect, somewhat larger when it divorced itself from Europe. Truss is simply restating problems which she was, while in office under various governments, partly responsible for. She's not presenting any significant solutions.
There is stuff which is consensus across the political spectrum (and also runs into opposition) - for example the government's current plans to make it far easier and cheaper to build nuclear power stations. No doubt Truss would agree with that, but so do I, and (if he is sincere) so does Starmer.
On PPE
1) disposable PPE is the chosen option 2) during the pandemic usage went up by orders of magnitude. 3) PPE has a shelf life 4) so a stockpile of PPE for a pandemic would require vast amounts to be thrown away each year at huge cost. 5) a domestic manufacturing capacity with the flexibility to suddenly make an order of magnitude more would cost vast amounts 6) and you would need all the precursor materials as well 7) can’t possibly use non-disposable PPE as standard. Because of memories of gas masks from 1953, apparently. 8) the problem is too big
So the plan for the next pandemic is to place really big orders with Chinese manufacturers.
Yes, really
Or shells for artillery we don’t make either.
Or take the whole steel debate. Virgin steel is vital for X,Y and Z. But even if we maintained the furnaces in the U.K. we would need to import ore.
The questions that weren’t asked - could we learn to make X, Y and Z from scrap? The history of steel is full of such leaps.. should we stockpile steel instead?
Afternoon all. Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues' All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Seems MOE at best
Some interestimg comment in the press from Lord Hayward today (Guardian i think) on the trad parties canvassers for the locals reporting increased 'Anyone but reform' responses. We may see some surprising results in May. Ive got Norfolk ready for analysis of course but i have Solihull earmarked as a bellweather of vote holding up-iness
The problem with anyone but reform is working out who that anyone is - that’s why the Green Party did well in Gorton, it was the obvious candidate
It's starting to dawn on him that this is a debacle from which he needs to distant himself.
They probably embarked on Operation Epstein Fury because they managed to convince themselves it would be easy. See also the SMO, Suez and Leeds Utd's 2000/2001 Champions League campaign
Looks like Rubio is going to be set up for the fall, rather than Hegseth.
Thus one however might be significant..... Govt 'handling of defence' cratering
Labour taking the hit for the fact the Tories left no ships, very few planes and not a lot else.
22% cut in defence spending over 14 yeas slashed from 2.5% to 2%.
What the feck do the public expect.
Labour need to explain the disgraceful hand they were left.
They may have been left a bad hand, but what do they plan to do about it?
Not a lot one can do in the short, and even medium term, unless someone has some warships for sale. How long would it take the South Koreans to build us a couple of destroyers?
A post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting. It has therefore been deleted.
Yet still not admiting that this was an Islamist terror attack aimed at those protesting Mamdani.
It didn't fail to reflect the gravity of the situation. It failed to accurately communicate who was responsible, who the intended victims were and where the blame for the attempted terrorist attack lay. In other words you didn't accidentally downplay the seriousness of it, you deliberately misrepresented what happened to conceal the truth from the public.
Fucking hell that original CNN tweet is indescribably mendacious
Comments
But as I've pointed out umpteen times, health costs in the UK are rising astonishingly quickly even after adjusting for demographic change. Indeed demographics are completely dwarfed by how sick we are as a country and the remarkable extent to which the NHS can find ways to fix us.
It's a political choice. The only solution is to reduce that demand, or to ration treatment. Rory Stewart in particular drives me nuts because he talks about the UK like it is South Korea, and the health costs are inevitable. They aren't!
https://www.nrpfnetwork.org.uk/information-and-resources/rights-and-entitlements
The whole benefit/financial support system has a long list of exceptions so you will always have an opportunity to create a narrative depending on your viewpoint.
Whilst I am fortunate enough to be in the former camp, not sure it is fair to say the pension age needs to be increased without offering some restructuring in the latter groups favour too.
scratch' have a small problem.
It all comes down to the race.
Undulating course, not flat one. It’s up in a place called Cots wolds, which is upland hills.
I think you mean "pension age"?
(Or has the terminology changed?)
Liz Truss does not get it, even remotely.
How many public service broadcasts suggested losing weight or doing more exercise, given that obesity was a massive factory in fatalities from the disease?
From the OR point of view, what you need to do is look at what you need, and the various levels of reliability you require, together with costs of providing that reliability.
https://ilcuk.org.uk/life-expectancy-decline-hits-economy-and-workforce/
Of all the countries which don't have them, Ukraine is the one which doesn't have them most.
We'd know if they did, as significant parts of the as yet untouched Russian military infrastructure would be severely fucked up by now. Possibly along with the Kremlin.
Trump has set off his lunatic followers.
Unless you've arrived on a boat...
And anyway, the current timetable is to increase penion age to 69 by 2040. It would only need one additional year increase to match Denmark.
I cannot see a simple way of calculating this at age 65 in 1947, but it is easy to do that for now.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07
So don’t make the assumption that you can save the NHS money, it may just be shifting the cost to a slightly different budget
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040159/life-expectancy-united-kingdom-all-time/
1950 it was 67.
The average person then only got a handful of years of state pension, but thanks to modern brilliant healthcare we can keep people alive for two decades or more of retirement.
Home economics is another hot topic.
Mind you, logically she didn't have to pay the taxes that fund those services either so actually it's quite a tempting bargain at the current extortionate rates.
I seriously doubt it. Particularly after the experience of the last few years.
Then UK made its problems. in that respect, somewhat larger when it divorced itself from Europe.
Truss is simply restating problems which she was, while in office under various governments, partly responsible for. She's not presenting any significant solutions.
There is stuff which is consensus across the political spectrum (and also runs into opposition) - for example the government's current plans to make it far easier and cheaper to build nuclear power stations. No doubt Truss would agree with that, but so do I, and (if he is sincere) so does Starmer.
Teach compound interest, mortgages, student loans, pensions, stock market investments… but also more day-to-day stuff like bulk purchasing and energy usage.
Algebra is still important though.
Which is why it’s next to impossible to challenge, because nobody in the power structure actually wants to officially “know” that the models are wrong. If they ‘’knew” officially, they’d have to change policy & that would (at the least) cost political capital that they’d rather spend on other projects.
I'm sure in 1950 the expected extra life for someone at 65 was more than 2 years.
I think it is primarily a question about changing the infrastructure. If you make it an issue of education and personal choice then I think you fail.
I followed up the query on "cost of providing a protected stopping place at a bus stop", and it's a right rabbit hole.
I was referred to chapter 3 of the "Traffic Signs Manual". That chapter has 250 dense pages on it's own. And that is the "easy to read" version. There is a "Bus Stop Clearway", and several other items.
The layout is diagram 1025.1 from the The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016. I think that is - yes - more than 1000 diagrams. And that is multi volume.
I don't have the time this month to go further on this.
Even Iraq vets Blair and Campbell couldn't have spouted this nonsense with a straight face.
Trump: "Based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco is so involved, I thought they were going to attack us"
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2031128968829526122
https://www.bloomberg.com/energy
This isn't even lying, it's not competent enough to be lying. This is a madman babbling.
“Pessimism about Iran’s fate is now baked into Chinese assessments of the Middle East,” writes Yun Sun. “China’s disillusionment with Iran’s leaders means that Beijing is not inherently opposed to regime change.”
It has been Trump's guiding light throughout. Regardless of the overwhelming evidence, bullshit it out.
Nigel and Kemi will be distraught.
Their messaging has been so so nieve.
Nigel changes tack out of the wind but that's more down to being ignored by Donald.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-signs-manual
How would you teach financial planning and cash management without algebra?
But, as you indicate, that is distorted by enormous rates of child mortality. 45-50% of children would die before 14. Then, 10% of women would die from childbirth. And a similar proportion of men would die in wars, accidents on farms, at sea etc. (Natural disasters tended to carry off far more people than in modern rich countries, as well).
Avoid those risks, and you could probably expect to reach 60 or so.
https://x.com/cnn/status/2031364168855548101
A post regarding the two individuals arrested for throwing homemade bombs outside of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home failed to reflect the gravity of the incident thereby breaching the editorial standards we require for all our reporting. It has therefore been deleted.
Yet still not admiting that this was an Islamist terror attack aimed at those protesting Mamdani.
https://x.com/konstantinkisin/status/2031384636798968008
It didn't fail to reflect the gravity of the situation. It failed to accurately communicate who was responsible, who the intended victims were and where the blame for the attempted terrorist attack lay. In other words you didn't accidentally downplay the seriousness of it, you deliberately misrepresented what happened to conceal the truth from the public.
I doubt that the Iranians have any working radar that tells them what is going on.
I wonder if their own tankers are using it too?
Been poking around the polling figures released today - Focaldata VI abd YG govt approval and 'biggest issues'
All very much MoE (although the Tories have had 4 polling minus 2s now so perhaps a small hit taken in the short term?). No real evidence of significant bounces or flops. The only stand out stat is defence now being third biggest issue and +10 on salience. Understandably. Id get the Dragon moving Keir.
We are somewhere around Ref 26.5 Lab 19 Con 18.5 Green 14 LD 12 on average
Nobody wants this war to continue but I urge caution before putting out the bunting
Mind you, Starmer still has the Mandelson scancal and May elections to face, following which we should have a better understanding of the political landscape
1) disposable PPE is the chosen option
2) during the pandemic usage went up by orders of magnitude.
3) PPE has a shelf life
4) so a stockpile of PPE for a pandemic would require vast amounts to be thrown away each year at huge cost.
5) a domestic manufacturing capacity with the flexibility to suddenly make an order of magnitude more would cost vast amounts
6) and you would need all the precursor materials as well
7) can’t possibly use non-disposable PPE as standard. Because of memories of gas masks from 1953, apparently.
8) the problem is too big
So the plan for the next pandemic is to place really big orders with Chinese manufacturers.
Yes, really
Or shells for artillery we don’t make either.
Or take the whole steel debate. Virgin steel is vital for X,Y and Z. But even if we maintained the furnaces in the U.K. we would need to import ore.
The questions that weren’t asked - could we learn to make X, Y and Z from scrap? The history of steel is full of such leaps.. should we stockpile steel instead?
Five by-elections the day after tomorrow. Three LD defences, in what look like strong LD areas, one Green and one Indie. Only the Ind, in North Kesteven, Lincs, looks to be in Reform territory, although one of the LD seats is in Liverpool.
And it’s much more convent for everyone for the tankers to roll through, than if they really, really stopped.
From a mild acquaintance with the Middle East, the following film quote comes to
Mind
“Guangzhou is a chemical weapons plant masquerading as a fertilizer plant. We know this. The Chinese know that we know. But we make-believe that we don't know and the Chinese make-believe that they believe that we don't know, but know that we know. Everybody knows."
Ive got Norfolk ready for analysis of course but i have Solihull earmarked as a bellweather of vote holding up-iness
Thus one however might be significant.....
Govt 'handling of defence' cratering
If not, and it's not too late, can I recommend a pensions advisor?
We've all worked with greedy b******ds who wouldn't let go and carried on to the detriment of their younger colleagues development and financial prospects, but you're a long time dead and ill health can ruin retirement plans.
Sleaford isnt terrible for the Cons per se (tories in Lincs prob 'strongest' in Sleaford, Grantham, Gainsborough) but theyll lose more to Lincs Ind than Reform so fingers crossed for the Indy
Healthy life expectancy another.
We are simply extending the length of end of life sickness in the main.
https://x.com/hfi_research/status/2031033298676572407
There’s definitely ships crossing.
Healthcare research and new drug development is usually focused on increasing quality-adjusted life years (QALY), but that often means helping retired people live longer. Which is a good thing! But you could get the government to push more research money into treating conditions that affect working-age adults.: see if that is popular with the electorate.
They probably embarked on Operation Epstein Fury because they managed to convince themselves it would be easy. See also the SMO, Suez and Leeds Utd's 2000/2001 Champions League campaign
@gbrew24
·
1h
Everybody seems to think this war is over/ending, except for Iran, which makes sense since they are still being bombed.
You can all buy the taco, but if Iran doesn't then the war can't end.
https://x.com/gbrew24/status/2031374981620191438
"How ill white hairs become a fool and jester."
22% cut in defence spending over 14 yeas slashed from 2.5% to 2%.
What the feck do the public expect.
Labour need to explain the disgraceful hand they were left.
I am sure @OldKingCole shares my view
https://www.uksteel.org/electric-arc-furnaces-1
You sound like Trump still blaming everything on Biden.