@Tykejohnno That clears up whether UC has been signed off or not..... Oh, it doesn't, it is bluster and bullsh*t, in place of an answer. Dave stated it was signed off, the relevant department said it wasn't. who to believe?
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
This has exactly the same effect on the supply chain as removing competition for inefficient car parts makers by banning the import of cheaper car parts. Namely: 1) Companies buying the car parts to make cars move overseas where they can buy cheaper, better parts. 2) To the extent that they don't, the costs are paid by all the companies that use the cars, costing jobs right across the whole economy.
The one you should be particularly worrying about in the next 20 years is (1), because communications technology and better machinery will make it possible to move all kinds of jobs out of the country whenever the government is preventing the workers from moving to the jobs. And when you offshore a job because you banned the person who would have done it from coming, you take some of the few remaining non-mobile support jobs with you.
The coherent thing to do here is to crack down on trade as well to prevent the domestic job from turning into an import, but this policy is very short of mainstream advocates in the UK.
Your logic only holds for tradeable products. The issue with immigration is that it hurts every low income job. So you're right consumers across the country (i.e. all income levels) benefit from the improvement, but producers in low wage jobs (i.e. all low income levels) get the cost. The result is something that's usually known as "economically regressive".
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
Make the jobs more attractive by removing benefits from people who refuse to do them
Protectionism at the low end of society is needed, it doesn't need to be a dirty word.
This would also mean that the immigrants that do work here would be of a higher skilllset, have more money, and probably be more inclined to assimilate
As usual, an overly simplistic prospectus. Would you remove benefits for a mum of three whose partner has abandoned her? In which case, would you take the children into care - as she would have no way of looking after them while being forced to work.
Were this as simple as the reactionary right think it is, it would have been solved decades ago. Thankfully politicians of the sensible centre-left and centre-right realise it's a complex issue with few if any easy answers.
If the jobs paid a decent wage, she could afford childcare for a couple hours after school. In addition, we could make childcare far cheaper by getting rid of the ridiculous ratio system. But when the Coalition tried to do that, Labour idiots threw a strop.
So great that one of his first acts as Chancellor was to slash HMRC's budget, sacking lots of tax experts in the process, the outcome of which being that the government found itself with a massive revenue hole So you re-hire lots of new civil servants, train them up as tax experts and protect the HMRC budget. I suppose you could say he's done the right thing after exploring all the other possibilities.
You made that all up, didn't you?
No I didn't. A have a good contact there. HMRC's budget was slashed before being protected. Why do you think that is? I know someone who's benefiting very nicely from being one of the new experts they're training up having got rid of many of the old ones. Sadly our media aren't interested in reporting this government's many failures. How IDS survives in spite of the mess of UC is a mystery.
Mr. Booth, full respect to you and your contacts, but I never knew a change in the public sector that wasn't rubbished by the people affected. Every change, every budget cut was always the end of civilisation as we know it. Take a large pinch of salt with all stories eminating from a department that has undergone change.
Unfortunately he goes off the rails at the end with his lies regarding the ambitious plans of the unionists parties for major devolution. They are only offering responsibilities , not powers. Kidding on the tax is decided and cutting the budget and leaving Scotland at the mercy of an arbitrary number is nothing great. They are retaining all powers that matter at Westminster.
Could be a big shake up in Le Tour today, very wet & windy and they are heading through cobbles. And they are already racing @ 130 km out, if Chris Froome survives today with no time gaps to his GC competitors, he wins.
Unfortunately he goes off the rails at the end with his lies regarding the ambitious plans of the unionists parties for major devolution. They are only offering responsibilities , not powers. Kidding on the tax is decided and cutting the budget and leaving Scotland at the mercy of an arbitrary number is nothing great. They are retaining all powers that matter at Westminster.
As a professed democrat, I'd have thought you'd welcome a national conversation on Barnett? Salmond keeps telling us how rich Scotland is, so perhaps money would be better spent elsewhere......
Harman handling a sticky interview on R4 and her NCCL days well......
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
Make the jobs more attractive by removing benefits from people who refuse to do them
Protectionism at the low end of society is needed, it doesn't need to be a dirty word.
This would also mean that the immigrants that do work here would be of a higher skilllset, have more money, and probably be more inclined to assimilate
As usual, an overly simplistic prospectus. Would you remove benefits for a mum of three whose partner has abandoned her? In which case, would you take the children into care - as she would have no way of looking after them while being forced to work.
Were this as simple as the reactionary right think it is, it would have been solved decades ago. Thankfully politicians of the sensible centre-left and centre-right realise it's a complex issue with few if any easy answers.
If she was looking for a job but knocking back ones she was capable of doing id take her JSA away yes
It is you who is being predictable by refusing to contemplate taking any action to take people off benefits and producing an extreme sympathy case as if it were the norm
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
This has exactly the same effect on the supply chain as removing competition for inefficient car parts makers by banning the import of cheaper car parts. Namely: 1) Companies buying the car parts to make cars move overseas where they can buy cheaper, better parts. 2) To the extent that they don't, the costs are paid by all the companies that use the cars, costing jobs right across the whole economy.
The one you should be particularly worrying about in the next 20 years is (1), because communications technology and better machinery will make it possible to move all kinds of jobs out of the country whenever the government is preventing the workers from moving to the jobs. And when you offshore a job because you banned the person who would have done it from coming, you take some of the few remaining non-mobile support jobs with you.
The coherent thing to do here is to crack down on trade as well to prevent the domestic job from turning into an import, but this policy is very short of mainstream advocates in the UK.
No it isn't. I'm talking about unskilled minimum wage jobs that anyone can do.
"Thankfully politicians of the sensible centre-left and centre-right realise it's a complex issue with few if any easy answers"
Crikey, Mr. Fett, the old irony meter spiked when I read that, given that a short while ago you had posted:
"The only clean way of doing this is to have some sort of citizen's payment, which is universal. Everyone from your archetypal layabout to your Mayfair billionaire (some of these are the same people!) would get it, unconditionally"
That's the way to stop benefit culture? Give them to everyone?!!
How do you make the numbers stack up - even accepting that £5K is not a particularly generous level of basic income.
Well you can do it one bit at a time. The personal allowance on income tax is worth nearly £3000 per person in work, which is about £60 a week, or getting close to the level of JSA. So, abolish the personal allowance, abolish JSA, and pay a citizen's income at the same rate as JSA to all citizens of working age.
The next thing you could do is to abolish the horrendously complicated tax credits system, that gives people on low incomes marginal tax rates of ~85%, and fold that into the citizen's income.
It makes it easier for people from poorer backgrounds to take risks in terms of setting up businesses, in the same way as it is for middle-class people who have savings and wealthier family to fall back on.
It improves incentives to work and it removes a vast amount of bureaucracy.
The cost of housing is a problem in terms of making this work, but it's a big problem for the country in other ways so you have to fix that anyway. Paying vast amounts of housing benefit is no solution.
Polling Observatory: Our estimates for July 1 put Labour at 34.6 per cent … Conservative support is stable at 30.8 per cent … UKIP 14.8 per cent … Liberal Democrats 8.8 per cent
Unfortunately he goes off the rails at the end with his lies regarding the ambitious plans of the unionists parties for major devolution. They are only offering responsibilities , not powers. Kidding on the tax is decided and cutting the budget and leaving Scotland at the mercy of an arbitrary number is nothing great. They are retaining all powers that matter at Westminster.
As a professed democrat, I'd have thought you'd welcome a national conversation on Barnett? Salmond keeps telling us how rich Scotland is, so perhaps money would be better spent elsewhere......
Harman handling a sticky interview on R4 and her NCCL days well......
My position is that Scotland should decide how to collect its own money and decide how to spend it as well. It should not be done by people we did not vote for in London. If you think that is democracy start sending me your salary and I will work out what you should spend it on.
@Tykejohnno That clears up whether UC has been signed off or not..... Oh, it doesn't, it is bluster and bullsh*t, in place of an answer. Dave stated it was signed off, the relevant department said it wasn't. who to believe?
I particularly enjoyed this devastating revelation:
The leak comes after ministers launched a scheme for Jersey account-holders to make disclosures last year. They claim the big challenge the authorities face is secret tax evasion, which is a crime. The chancellor, George Osborne, said in April: "If you're evading tax offshore, there is no safe haven and we will find you."
But the findings contradict this picture of illegality. Many Jersey loopholes used by wealthy Britons to pass on their fortunes appear from our research to have been perfectly legal.
You have to admire their chutzpah in trying to claim that the fact people have arranged their affairs in accordance with the law is a scandal. Would it be better if they were breaking the law?
Inexplicably there is no front page article on Guardian.com about the tax treatment of Guardian Media Group's disposal of Trader Media Group to Apax Ptnrs for the tidy sum of £620m. Nor much about the compensation structure of GMG Chief Exec Andrew Miller (hint: £2.2m including bonus, of all things).
In fact the information only appears in a round-up of other media sites.
Disgraceful but wholly understandable and expected.
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
This has exactly the same effect on the supply chain as removing competition for inefficient car parts makers by banning the import of cheaper car parts. Namely: 1) Companies buying the car parts to make cars move overseas where they can buy cheaper, better parts. 2) To the extent that they don't, the costs are paid by all the companies that use the cars, costing jobs right across the whole economy.
The one you should be particularly worrying about in the next 20 years is (1), because communications technology and better machinery will make it possible to move all kinds of jobs out of the country whenever the government is preventing the workers from moving to the jobs. And when you offshore a job because you banned the person who would have done it from coming, you take some of the few remaining non-mobile support jobs with you.
The coherent thing to do here is to crack down on trade as well to prevent the domestic job from turning into an import, but this policy is very short of mainstream advocates in the UK.
Your logic only holds for tradeable products.
No. No. No no no no no no no no.
(1) holds for tradeable products, tradeable services and services that can be replaced by tradeable products and services.
Japanese houses are made in factories. They don't look like they're made in factories, because they ship them in bits. But once the builders show up, the thing goes from a flat bit of land to a completed house before you know it. Because they're just bolting the house together. The parts were made in a factory somewhere, with machinery made in another factory somewhere else, and those will be places where they can get cheap labour. That means far fewer jobs for Japanese builders. They probably don't realize their jobs have gone overseas, but they have. And a lot of the related jobs that need to be near the place where stuff is getting produced have gone with them.
This is true of nearly all products and services, with ever decreasing numbers of exceptions. You may need somebody on the ground to carry on doing it the same way, but you can also do it a different way. If the government stops you employing someone from Country Y from doing a job efficiently in Country X, the market will reconfigure that business so that it can move the job to Country Y.
This happens even in a pre-internet world, but with good communications and robotics you'll be amazed what we can offshore in the next 20 years.
Robert, with very high rental costs I think the loss of housing benefit in particular for adults in the London would be a significant factor for the indigenous population.
Perhaps young single foreign workers are also more willing to flat/house share in greater multiples too.
It's not just London, though. A relative of mine runs a business which does accountancy and admin for farms. One of their clients is a huge fruit-farm in Kent, which employs a lot of people - partly seasonal, but there is a surprising amount of work all year round as they have to clean and prepare the polytunnels for the next season. Accomodation is provided, and it's pretty good accomodation, so housing is not an obstacle. But again, virtually no English applicants for the jobs which are available.
...
IDS is trying to tackle, to the mockery of many, not least on here?
Tories only goal is to line both their own and their chums pockets.
Your conclusions are all wrong. Indeed one-eyed. The govt is following the advice of labour's Frank Field. it is cutting back abuses capping benefits and making work more lucrative than benefits. Its working too if you look at the figures.
Whilst people are getting housing benefit it is not worth people working at the lower end of the scale , given zero hours contracts, minimum wage etc etc. Whilst you can get more money on the dole there is no incentive to work unless it is for cash in hand. The govt is not solving that issue, it is merely cutting some benefits. It will not solve the problem. However my real point was that if they expended as much energy on the real big frauds taking place at the high end , then the benefits issue would be less relevant , still an issue for society but not as big a financial issue. Explain how that is one eyed.
Spouting out 'zero hours contracts' is meaningless. People are in work and getting paid. it has kept companies in business and people in jobs. The government is combating fraud quite successfully so your argument fails https://fullfact.org/factchecks/DWP_fraud_hotline_success_rate_prosecutions-3167 Combating benefit fraud is important but the extent of it is limited. The point about capping and limiting benefits is to prevent it being a lifestyle choice. The govt have cut tax allowances to help low paid as well.
Robert, with very high rental costs I think the loss of housing benefit in particular for adults in the London would be a significant factor for the indigenous population.
Perhaps young single foreign workers are also more willing to flat/house share in greater multiples too.
It's not just London, though. A relative of mine runs a business which does accountancy and admin for farms. One of their clients is a huge fruit-farm in Kent, which employs a lot of people - partly seasonal, but there is a surprising amount of work all year round as they have to clean and prepare the polytunnels for the next season. Accomodation is provided, and it's pretty good accomodation, so housing is not an obstacle. But again, virtually no English applicants for the jobs which are available.
...
Tories only goal is to line both their own and their chums pockets.
Your conclusions are all wrong. Indeed one-eyed. The govt is following the advice of labour's Frank Field. it is cutting back abuses capping benefits and making work more lucrative than benefits. Its working too if you look at the figures.
e eyed.
Spouting out 'zero hours contracts' is meaningless. People are in work and getting paid. it has kept companies in business and people in jobs. The government is combating fraud quite successfully so your argument fails https://fullfact.org/factchecks/DWP_fraud_hotline_success_rate_prosecutions-3167 Combating benefit fraud is important but the extent of it is limited. The point about capping and limiting benefits is to prevent it being a lifestyle choice. The govt have cut tax allowances to help low paid as well.
Yet you ignore the fact that they do little to chase the real benefits cheats at the top end of the scale where most of the fraud takes place. If they closed tax loopholes and chased tax evaders they would get much better return , but they would rather harry the poor as easier targets. How does benefits fraud compare with tax evasion. How many successful prosecutions at the top end.
Unfortunately he goes off the rails at the end with his lies regarding the ambitious plans of the unionists parties for major devolution. They are only offering responsibilities , not powers. Kidding on the tax is decided and cutting the budget and leaving Scotland at the mercy of an arbitrary number is nothing great. They are retaining all powers that matter at Westminster.
As a professed democrat, I'd have thought you'd welcome a national conversation on Barnett? Salmond keeps telling us how rich Scotland is, so perhaps money would be better spent elsewhere......
Harman handling a sticky interview on R4 and her NCCL days well......
My position is that Scotland should decide how to collect its own money and decide how to spend it as well. It should not be done by people we did not vote for in London. If you think that is democracy start sending me your salary and I will work out what you should spend it on.
In the context of a no vote, the people of Scotland will have decided to be "governed by people they did not vote for" - and in that context, why not review a spending formula decades past it's sell by date?
So, it hasn't been signed off, but is being drip fed with money instead? But very shortly, the committee will change it's mind and sign it off as normal?
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
This has exactly the same effect on the supply chain as removing competition for inefficient car parts makers by banning the import of cheaper car parts. Namely: 1) Companies buying the car parts to make cars move overseas where they can buy cheaper, better parts. 2) To the extent that they don't, the costs are paid by all the companies that use the cars, costing jobs right across the whole economy.
The one you should be particularly worrying about in the next 20 years is (1), because communications technology and better machinery will make it possible to move all kinds of jobs out of the country whenever the government is preventing the workers from moving to the jobs. And when you offshore a job because you banned the person who would have done it from coming, you take some of the few remaining non-mobile support jobs with you.
The coherent thing to do here is to crack down on trade as well to prevent the domestic job from turning into an import, but this policy is very short of mainstream advocates in the UK.
No it isn't. I'm talking about unskilled minimum wage jobs that anyone can do.
If we're only talking about minimum wage jobs I don't see how you think you're going to increase the incentive to take them, since they'll still only be paying the minimum wage.
In any case there aren't any jobs that anyone can do. All jobs require a minimum level of health, intelligence, dedication and non-criminality.
If your original post said something coherent, your thought is that you can restrict competition to increase the costs paid by employers so they have to employ people they think are less good than the people they wanted to employ - either more expensive people or less good people. Depending which one you're trying to do, the effect of doing this on the supply chain is exactly the same as either restricting the import of expensive car parts or restricting the import of better quality parts.
Unfortunately he goes off the rails at the end with his lies regarding the ambitious plans of the unionists parties for major devolution. They are only offering responsibilities , not powers. Kidding on the tax is decided and cutting the budget and leaving Scotland at the mercy of an arbitrary number is nothing great. They are retaining all powers that matter at Westminster.
As a professed democrat, I'd have thought you'd welcome a national conversation on Barnett? Salmond keeps telling us how rich Scotland is, so perhaps money would be better spent elsewhere......
Harman handling a sticky interview on R4 and her NCCL days well......
My position is that Scotland should decide how to collect its own money and decide how to spend it as well. It should not be done by people we did not vote for in London. If you think that is democracy start sending me your salary and I will work out what you should spend it on.
In the context of a no vote, the people of Scotland will have decided to be "governed by people they did not vote for" - and in that context, why not review a spending formula decades past it's sell by date?
Of course they will but deny it for now , unionists will not admit to it before the vote. If they do wish to change Barnett then they should give Scotland its own cash , which will be substantially higher than barnett money. Their only commitment is to slash the Scottish budget and if fools vote for that then they will deserve all they get.
PS : I note you did not really answer the pocket money question.
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
This has exactly the same effect on the supply chain as removing competition for inefficient car parts makers by banning the import of cheaper car parts. Namely: 1) Companies buying the car parts to make cars move overseas where they can buy cheaper, better parts. 2) To the extent that they don't, the costs are paid by all the companies that use the cars, costing jobs right across the whole economy.
The one you should be particularly worrying about in the next 20 years is (1), because communications technology and better machinery will make it possible to move all kinds of jobs out of the country whenever the government is preventing the workers from moving to the jobs. And when you offshore a job because you banned the person who would have done it from coming, you take some of the few remaining non-mobile support jobs with you.
The coherent thing to do here is to crack down on trade as well to prevent the domestic job from turning into an import, but this policy is very short of mainstream advocates in the UK.
No it isn't. I'm talking about unskilled minimum wage jobs that anyone can do.
If we're only talking about minimum wage jobs I don't see how you think you're going to increase the incentive to take them, since they'll still only be paying the minimum wage.
In any case there aren't any jobs that anyone can do. All jobs require a minimum level of health, intelligence, dedication and non-criminality.
If your original post said something coherent, your thought is that you can restrict competition to increase the costs paid by employers so they have to employ people they think are less good than the people they wanted to employ - either more expensive people or less good people. Depending which one you're trying to do, the effect of doing this on the supply chain is exactly the same as either restricting the import of expensive car parts or restricting the import of better quality parts.
The incentive is that if you don't take a minimum wage job you lose your benefits
I don't see how employers are paying more. They'd be paying the same but to different people
''and producing an extreme sympathy case as if it were the norm.''
The left is very prone to inventing plastic upstanding working class people in trouble to advance their politics. The creation never really rings true though.
James O'Brien does it all the time. Also, take that 'working class family' from Jimmy McGovern's 'common' earlier this week. Working class family? Yeh right.
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
This has exactly the same effect on the supply chain as removing competition for inefficient car parts makers by banning the import of cheaper car parts. Namely: 1) Companies buying the car parts to make cars move overseas where they can buy cheaper, better parts. 2) To the extent that they don't, the costs are paid by all the companies that use the cars, costing jobs right across the whole economy.
The one you should be particularly worrying about in the next 20 years is (1), because communications technology and better machinery will make it possible to move all kinds of jobs out of the country whenever the government is preventing the workers from moving to the jobs. And when you offshore a job because you banned the person who would have done it from coming, you take some of the few remaining non-mobile support jobs with you.
The coherent thing to do here is to crack down on trade as well to prevent the domestic job from turning into an import, but this policy is very short of mainstream advocates in the UK.
No it isn't. I'm talking about unskilled minimum wage jobs that anyone can do.
If we're only talking about minimum wage jobs I don't see how you think you're going to increase the incentive to take them, since they'll still only be paying the minimum wage.
In any case there aren't any jobs that anyone can do. All jobs require a minimum level of health, intelligence, dedication and non-criminality.
If your original post said something coherent, your thought is that you can restrict competition to increase the costs paid by employers so they have to employ people they think are less good than the people they wanted to employ - either more expensive people or less good people. Depending which one you're trying to do, the effect of doing this on the supply chain is exactly the same as either restricting the import of expensive car parts or restricting the import of better quality parts.
The incentive is that if you don't take a minimum wage job you lose your benefits
I don't see how employers are paying more. They'd be paying the same but to different people
The benefit loss thing stands on its own whether or not you restrict competition.
Employers are paying more in the minimum wage case because the people they're hiring after the government intervention you advocate aren't as good as the people they'd hire without government intervention. If they were, they'd already be hiring them.
Robert, with very high rental costs I think the loss of housing benefit in particular for adults in the London would be a significant factor for the indigenous population.
Perhaps young single foreign workers are also more willing to flat/house share in greater multiples too.
It's not just London, though. A relative of mine runs a business which does accountancy and admin for farms. One of their clients is a huge fruit-farm in Kent, which employs a lot of people - partly seasonal, but there is a surprising amount of work all year round as they have to clean and prepare the polytunnels for the next season. Accomodation is provided, and it's pretty good accomodation, so housing is not an obstacle. But again, virtually no English applicants for the jobs which are available.
...
Tories only goal is to line both their own and their chums pockets.
Your conclusions are all wrong. Indeed one-eyed. The govt is following the advice of labour's Frank Field. it is cutting back abuses capping benefits and making work more lucrative than benefits. Its working too if you look at the figures.
e eyed.
Spouting out 'zero hours contracts' is meaningless. People are in work and getting paid. it has kept companies in business and people in jobs. The government is combating fraud quite successfully so your argument fails https://fullfact.org/factchecks/DWP_fraud_hotline_success_rate_prosecutions-3167 Combating benefit fraud is important but the extent of it is limited. The point about capping and limiting benefits is to prevent it being a lifestyle choice. The govt have cut tax allowances to help low paid as well.
Yet you ignore the fact that they do little to chase the real benefits cheats at the top end of the scale where most of the fraud takes place. If they closed tax loopholes and chased tax evaders they would get much better return , but they would rather harry the poor as easier targets. How does benefits fraud compare with tax evasion. How many successful prosecutions at the top end.
The consensus is they have done far more than any recent incumbent of No 11 to close loopholes and avoidance schemes.
They should be working through the arts world, music world, sports world and overpaid boardrooms as we speak.
The day after the night before and apart from an extraordinary cultural, historical and sporting event, a vivid example of how the most unlikely thing can still happen.
Polls can be micro-analysed (as they are) and constituencies dissected and people can believe they know what's going to happen but as last night showed, the improbable happens.
Nobody can discount a Labour landslide or even a Conservative landslide or all points in between and that wondrous uncertainty will keep us hooked for another ten months.
I prefer horse racing - the wondrous uncertainty gets resolved and then you get another go.
''and producing an extreme sympathy case as if it were the norm.''
The left is very prone to inventing plastic upstanding working class people in trouble to advance their politics. The creation never really rings true though.
James O'Brien does it all the time. Also, take that 'working class family' from Jimmy McGovern's 'common' earlier this week. Working class family? Yeh right.
It takes genuine working class people to know that argument is a load of rubbish
Middle class lefties have such a stupid idea of what working class people are like
Working in the office where we get CVs has given me a new perspective on this, which is that the issue is not necessarily one of workers from outside the country accepting lower wages, but just the total lack of aptitude amongst so many applicants from the UK (in this case from Scotland). No covering letter, basic (really basic) spelling and grammar issues, mis-spelling of words that are in the company title, emails like (this one is real) 'NoPussy-NoDancing@hotmail.com' -these come in by the dozen whenever we have a position advertised. Not saying we don't get our fair share of loopy foreign applicants too, but it's just funny that I know these unsuccessful Scottish ones will go back and complain that there aren't any jobs out there. It's an education issue. We have produced an ill-educated unmotivated workforce.
The one issue we have to consider is whether Cameron would want to go on as LOTO and Conservative Party leader. The last man to return to No.10 was Harold Wilson and before that WSC so it just doesn't happen. My recollection is that both Major and Hague were desperate to quit as soon as the defeat was obvious and even Brown came to realise the futility of his position.
After ten years leading the Party and five years as Prime Minister, why would Cameron want or need to go on ? My guess if he loses next year, he'll quit quickly and cleanly and leave the Party to choose the new Leader. Unlikely Hague and IDS, neither of whom made it to No.10, I cannot see David Cameron serving in another man's Cabinet. My guess is he'll do a final term in Witney and then go on to something else.
What we will then see is a defeated and vengeful Conservative Party turning its fire on UKIP and, as Cameron tried to (with some success) after 2005with the Lib Dems, we will see the new Conservative leadership "love bombing" Farage and UKIP into submission or absorption.
Working in the office where we get CVs has given me a new perspective on this, which is that the issue is not necessarily one of workers from outside the country accepting lower wages, but just the total lack of aptitude amongst so many applicants from the UK (in this case from Scotland). No covering letter, basic (really basic) spelling and grammar issues, mis-spelling of words that are in the company title, emails like (this one is real) 'NoPussy-NoDancing@hotmail.com' -these come in by the dozen whenever we have a position advertised. Not saying we don't get our fair share of loopy foreign applicants too, but it's just funny that I know these unsuccessful Scottish ones will go back and complain that there aren't any jobs out there. It's an education issue. We have produced an ill-educated unmotivated workforce.
Noooooooooooooooo! You can't say that today of all days. Tomorrow teachers are going on strike, aren't they? If the education system has actually been churning out ill-educated and unmotivated people who can't spell (let alone do sums), then those that have been criticising the educational establishment might actually be seen to have been correct. People might actually start thinking that Gove has a point.
Quite a poor day for UK economic statistics today. The BRC Shop Price Index worsened to -1.8% y-o-y, and house prices weakened more than expected to -0.6% m-o-m. This follows from yesterday's announcement that both UK industrial production and manufacturing production unexpectedly fell last month.
None of these are particularly important statistics, per se, and you should always be cautious about reading too much into single data points, but after a run of good economic data, we should be aware that the latest stats are not so encouraging.
Falling shop prices because of pricing action from the major supermarkets and slightly falling house prices are not really a big worry. Neither were yesterday's figures, a statistical phantom IMO. There is too much real world evidence in the UK economy elsewhere that shows decent production growth for the ONS figures to make sense. Next month the index will probably bounce back and in subsequent months both will be revised to show steady growth.
I agree: I am just slightly correcting the tendency of somebody (who shall remain nameless) to only post positive UK economic statistics.
I can't think who you have in mind, Robert.
Max is right about the fall in the Halifax House Price Index not being bad news, if it is significant news at all.
The BoE (and media) have been pushing to curb house price inflation through public warnings and it now seems to be working.
What the Halifax Index doesn't tell us though is what the regional variation in price rises is. With London prices growing well over twenty per cent and other regions barely growing at all this is necessary information before useful conclusions can be drawn. What we know from other indices is that central London prices have been falling quite significantly in the past few months so the Halifax aggregate UK index may just be reacting to price movements in the capital.s
Anyway here is the yellow box which shows that on a quarterly basis UK houses prices have grown by 2.3% and on an annual basis by 8.8%. These remain the highest rates of growth recorded over the past year, though the current price/earnings ratio at 4.95 has begun to fall back from its high.
================================================================= Period Index Standardised Monthly Qtrly Annual Price/ 1983=100 Average Change Change Change Earnings Price % %* %** Ratio --------------------------------------------------------------- Jun 2013 542.7 £167,668 0.5% 2.2% 3.7% 4.56 Jul 548.8 £169,567 1.1% 2.0% 4.6% 4.60 Aug 550.7 £170,149 0.3% 2.0% 5.4% 4.62 Sep 552.7 £170,767 0.4% 2.0% 6.2% 4.64 Oct 559.8 £172,960 1.3% 2.0% 6.9% 4.69 Nov 565.0 £174,564 0.9% 2.1% 7.7% 4.74 Dec 562.1 £173,677 -0.5% 2.0% 7.5% 4.68 Jan 2014 568.8 £175,736 1.2% 2.0% 7.3% 4.74 Feb 583.1 £180,163 2.5% 2.2% 7.9% 4.87 Mar 576.1 £177,996 -1.2% 2.3% 8.7% 4.79 Apr 574.6 £177,524 -0.3% 2.2% 8.5% 4.78 May 597.3 £184,566 4.0% 2.0% 8.7% 4.98 Jun 593.8 £183,462 -0.6% 2.3% 8.8% 4.95 =================================================================
All good news for the economy.
The worrying bit is the fall in volume of sales, which have been very low since the recession and a driver of the high rates of price increase.
The relevant key points from the Halifax report (May rather than June and not their own stats.) are
• Home sales edged down by 3% in May to below 100,000 for the first time in six months; however, transactions are still 15% higher than in May 2013. (Source: HMRC, seasonally adjusted figures)
• New buyer enquires fell for the sixth consecutive month in May, which if sustained could moderate further growth in demand. (Source: RICS)
Working in the office where we get CVs has given me a new perspective on this, which is that the issue is not necessarily one of workers from outside the country accepting lower wages, but just the total lack of aptitude amongst so many applicants from the UK (in this case from Scotland). No covering letter, basic (really basic) spelling and grammar issues, mis-spelling of words that are in the company title, emails like (this one is real) 'NoPussy-NoDancing@hotmail.com' -these come in by the dozen whenever we have a position advertised. Not saying we don't get our fair share of loopy foreign applicants too, but it's just funny that I know these unsuccessful Scottish ones will go back and complain that there aren't any jobs out there. It's an education issue. We have produced an ill-educated unmotivated workforce.
If that email is genuinely genuine then you really, really, really shouldn't be posting it on an internet forum.
On topic, I think whether Cameron goes immediately is going to be a function of where we are after the election. If the Tory vote holds up well, but Labour has a small leads in seats because of the defection of LibDem voters - and there is a risk of a period of unstable Government and a possible election in October or the following spring - then he could be convinced to stay.
A short period of a minority Ed Miliband Govt, with all the fun and games that will bring in the markets, coupled with Ed grovelling to Brussels and a period for buyers' remorse from the Kippers could see Cameron as PM again by 2016....
''We have produced an ill-educated unmotivated workforce.''
The other day I interviewed a (quite good, hard working and quick) lady who came into the interview carrying a appletize-type soft drink bottle from which she swigged intermittently throughout the process.
Another (young, well qualified) lady wore a jean jacket.
On a happy note before I go off to do the ironing. I see the pilot of a US budget airliner, which was diverted because of bad weather, rang up the local Domino Pizza place and, on his own credit card, had pizzas delivered to the plane for all his passengers who were stuck on it. What a great guy.
Having said that, I don't see why offshoring jobs to cheap countries, because demand is outstripping supply and pushing up prices in your home country, as a bad thing. If it gets to the point where it's causing unemployment among the low skilled in your home country, the price of domestic low skilled workers will drop until they're in work again. The danger offshoring argument just doesn't justify depressing low skilled wages here.
''The worrying bit is the fall in volume of sales, which have been very low since the recession and a driver of the high rates of price increase.''
There is clearly a buyers' strike as values are completely over extended. There is a stack of pent up demand, but just not at these levels.
Plus....people think rates are going up and don't want to take on huge mortgages.
Plus... Who wants to buy and sell houses when the government rakes in so much stamp duty?
taffys
I am not sure whether there has been any published research on why sales volume has been so low.
I don't believe it is lack of demand as the ratio of home buying inquiries to homes for sale (a Rightmove stat.) has been at historical highs (around 8 times the number of 'buyers' to 'sellers' from memory).
My speculation as to what is the primary cause is that sellers have been reluctant to realise a nominal price loss, especially in a market where rental demand is high. But then I was expecting sales volumes to rise disproportionately as prices across the UK reached their pre-crisis levels but this doesn't seem to be happening, at least not yet.
Make more low skilled jobs available by reducing the competition from overseas immigrants that have more incentive to do them
Make the jobs more attractive by removing benefits from people who refuse to do them
Protectionism at the low end of society is needed, it doesn't need to be a dirty word.
This would also mean that the immigrants that do work here would be of a higher skilllset, have more money, and probably be more inclined to assimilate
As usual, an overly simplistic prospectus. Would you remove benefits for a mum of three whose partner has abandoned her? In which case, would you take the children into care - as she would have no way of looking after them while being forced to work.
Were this as simple as the reactionary right think it is, it would have been solved decades ago. Thankfully politicians of the sensible centre-left and centre-right realise it's a complex issue with few if any easy answers.
If the jobs paid a decent wage, she could afford childcare for a couple hours after school. In addition, we could make childcare far cheaper by getting rid of the ridiculous ratio system. But when the Coalition tried to do that, Labour idiots threw a strop.
To be fair, with parents and child care, it's always a tough call.
Three kids. Childcare for under 5s very rarely has higher than 3-1 staff kid ratios, because looking after young kids requires constant vigilence.
So, assuming the mother earned the same as care giver (and if not, we're assuming a whole class of people on very low salaries...), then the mother would be giving all her income away (and this assumes no other costs for the childcare, and no tax or NI). It also ignores time costs of commuting, etc. etc.
On topic, I think whether Cameron goes immediately is going to be a function of where we are after the election. If the Tory vote holds up well, but Labour has a small leads in seats because of the defection of LibDem voters - and there is a risk of a period of unstable Government and a possible election in October or the following spring - then he could be convinced to stay.
A short period of a minority Ed Miliband Govt, with all the fun and games that will bring in the markets, coupled with Ed grovelling to Brussels and a period for buyers' remorse from the Kippers could see Cameron as PM again by 2016....
I'm less convinced. The only scenario I see Cameron staying is a Labour minority but the LDs and other parties won't want another election quickly so as long as there are more Labour MPs than Conservative/DUP (?) Ed M will be safe for a while.
In truth, Cameron could have governed on the same basis in 2010 - he didn't HAVE to create a Coalition to govern but it suited him (and Nick Clegg) to do so.
On topic, I think whether Cameron goes immediately is going to be a function of where we are after the election. If the Tory vote holds up well, but Labour has a small leads in seats because of the defection of LibDem voters - and there is a risk of a period of unstable Government and a possible election in October or the following spring - then he could be convinced to stay.
A short period of a minority Ed Miliband Govt, with all the fun and games that will bring in the markets, coupled with Ed grovelling to Brussels and a period for buyers' remorse from the Kippers could see Cameron as PM again by 2016....
I'm less convinced. The only scenario I see Cameron staying is a Labour minority but the LDs and other parties won't want another election quickly so as long as there are more Labour MPs than Conservative/DUP (?) Ed M will be safe for a while.
In truth, Cameron could have governed on the same basis in 2010 - he didn't HAVE to create a Coalition to govern but it suited him (and Nick Clegg) to do so.
A Coalition was necessary in order to establish a sustainable government which would have to take difficult decisions about an economy trashed by Labour, not a government under threat of frequent ambushes.
Having said that, I don't see why offshoring jobs to cheap countries, because demand is outstripping supply and pushing up prices in your home country, as a bad thing. If it gets to the point where it's causing unemployment among the low skilled in your home country, the price of domestic low skilled workers will drop until they're in work again. The danger offshoring argument just doesn't justify depressing low skilled wages here.
Jobs depend on other jobs and all workers aren't in fact completely interchangeable.
Say you've got a field where you can grow fruit, which is a very labour-intensive business. Fruit buyers can also import fruit from other countries if you can't sell it at a reasonable price. The fruit picking is currently being done by low-paid people from Romania. There are some British people in the town who, for various reasons some of which are discussed up-thread, aren't taking the fruit picking jobs.
The thought is that if you stop the Romanians from entering the country, the farmer will have to pay the unemployed British people more to pick the fruit, they'll take the fruit-picking jobs, and they won't be unemployed any more. But the risk is that what actually happens is that the fruit growing business is no longer competitive, because somebody can hire the Romanians in another country, and that economic activity stops and gets replaced by something that produces a lower return.
But what's worse is that when you get rid of that economic activity, you also get rid of the surrounding work that was benefiting from that activity - say the guy working at the petrol station or the local shop, or the person helping do the accounting. Some of these jobs were being done by British people, and when you remove the economic activity that's funding their jobs, they either become unemployed, or take lower-paying jobs. Like a lot of government intervention into the operation of free markets, this ends up resulting in the opposite of what it was supposed to accomplish.
PS. This is meant as an example to illustrate the mechanisms at work, I don't know anything about the fruit business.
On topic, I think whether Cameron goes immediately is going to be a function of where we are after the election. If the Tory vote holds up well, but Labour has a small leads in seats because of the defection of LibDem voters - and there is a risk of a period of unstable Government and a possible election in October or the following spring - then he could be convinced to stay.
A short period of a minority Ed Miliband Govt, with all the fun and games that will bring in the markets, coupled with Ed grovelling to Brussels and a period for buyers' remorse from the Kippers could see Cameron as PM again by 2016....
I'm less convinced. The only scenario I see Cameron staying is a Labour minority but the LDs and other parties won't want another election quickly so as long as there are more Labour MPs than Conservative/DUP (?) Ed M will be safe for a while.
In truth, Cameron could have governed on the same basis in 2010 - he didn't HAVE to create a Coalition to govern but it suited him (and Nick Clegg) to do so.
A Coalition was necessary in order to establish a sustainable government which would have to take difficult decisions about an economy trashed by Labour, not a government under threat of frequent ambushes.
It was also essential to communicate to the markets that there was a credible and stable political commitment to implement the fiscal consolidation required for the UK economy to recover.
That political stability and commitment to fiscal repair was a major factor in the keeping low the rates at which the UK could continue to borrow.
As a result the UK managed to steer clear of the worst of the eurozone borrowing crisis.
Every GB constituency now priced up at Ladbrokes. Plus here's a short bit about the betting markets non-reaction to Labour poll leads: http://ow.ly/yXl2W
You still haven't answered my question about what you would do with the children of single mothers whom you forced to work. Simplistic and wrong - that sums up your arguments today.
''and producing an extreme sympathy case as if it were the norm.''
The left is very prone to inventing plastic upstanding working class people in trouble to advance their politics. The creation never really rings true though.
James O'Brien does it all the time. Also, take that 'working class family' from Jimmy McGovern's 'common' earlier this week. Working class family? Yeh right.
It takes genuine working class people to know that argument is a load of rubbish
Middle class lefties have such a stupid idea of what working class people are like
But a far better idea than middle class Rightwingers, who tend to think working class people are all uncooth, bitter, immigrant-hating Clarkson-Littlejohns.
You still haven't answered my question about what you would do with the children of single mothers whom you forced to work. Simplistic and wrong - that sums up your arguments today.
That's because it's a straw man that you have invented. I never said all benefits should be withdrawn, just that if people were refusing work they shouldn't be given JSA
If she wasn't able to work the she wouldn't be claiming it anyway do wouldn't be denied it
People's reaction to the citizen's payment is just that - a reaction. Of the knee jerk variety. It's a clever idea, but god is in the details.
Anything to destroy the insidious Benefits Trap.
It is an idea which would seem to have several very nasty drawbacks a couple of which I raised earlier. So maybe a few less smug remarks and allegations about knee-jerk reactions might not come amiss.
You dismiss a genuine idea as ridiculous yet do not give a reason why it is ridiculous. Fairly poor standard of debate from you today sir.
"Everyone with an idea is a crank until the idea succeeds" - Mark Twain.
Because trying to get people off benefits by giving out more benefits to more people is ridiculous it's self explanatory.
Give people a bit if self respect by letting them earn money without being in debt to the state for handouts
Whether it's viable or not, the citizens income is not an entirely stupid idea. It eliminates at a stroke all benefits fraud, eliminates a wasteful layer of bureaucracy, ensures that marginal tax rates for work are minimized, and stops the harmful cycle of housing benefit increasing home prices which increases the cost of housing benefit.
Unfortunately, as Charles has pointed out, it's probably not affordable.
Just a quick thought on C.I. - if it were treated like regular income, and subject to income tax then the cost of giving it to higher paid workers would be massively reduced. Whether that would be a sufficient saving to make it work is another matter altogether.
''and producing an extreme sympathy case as if it were the norm.''
The left is very prone to inventing plastic upstanding working class people in trouble to advance their politics. The creation never really rings true though.
James O'Brien does it all the time. Also, take that 'working class family' from Jimmy McGovern's 'common' earlier this week. Working class family? Yeh right.
It takes genuine working class people to know that argument is a load of rubbish
Middle class lefties have such a stupid idea of what working class people are like
But a far better idea than middle class Rightwingers, who tend to think working class people are all uncooth, bitter, immigrant-hating Clarkson-Littlejohns.
Crikey, you criticise a group because in your stereotype of them they stereotype another group. The Gospel According to St Matthew verses 1 to 7 might be worthwhile reading for you.
Following Germany's weak industrial production number on Monday, and the UK's weak one on Tuesday, we now have very poor numbers out from the Netherlands, France and Italy.
EDIT: actually, the numbers are aren't quite all bad - prior month's industrial production was revised upwards in France, Finland, and the Netherlands. In some cases, the revisions are substantial: Finland goes from a 0.5% drop in May, to a 0.5% increase.
Nevertheless, 'not all bad' is still 'not very good at all'.
Comments
That clears up whether UC has been signed off or not.....
Oh, it doesn't, it is bluster and bullsh*t, in place of an answer.
Dave stated it was signed off, the relevant department said it wasn't. who to believe?
But it is a very dangerous day for him.
Blaming Andy Burnham or the decade old GP contract simply will not be an answer
Harman handling a sticky interview on R4 and her NCCL days well......
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/spectator-surgery/2014/07/the-problem-with-the-nhs-the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations/
It is you who is being predictable by refusing to contemplate taking any action to take people off benefits and producing an extreme sympathy case as if it were the norm
Ridiculous
The next thing you could do is to abolish the horrendously complicated tax credits system, that gives people on low incomes marginal tax rates of ~85%, and fold that into the citizen's income.
It makes it easier for people from poorer backgrounds to take risks in terms of setting up businesses, in the same way as it is for middle-class people who have savings and wealthier family to fall back on.
It improves incentives to work and it removes a vast amount of bureaucracy.
The cost of housing is a problem in terms of making this work, but it's a big problem for the country in other ways so you have to fix that anyway. Paying vast amounts of housing benefit is no solution.
Our estimates for July 1 put Labour at 34.6 per cent … Conservative support is stable at 30.8 per cent … UKIP 14.8 per cent … Liberal Democrats 8.8 per cent
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/pollingobservatory/100279233/ignore-the-juncker-bounce-and-the-labour-surge-polls-may-bounce-but-public-opinion-usually-doesnt/
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2014/jul/09/butler-sloss-wrong-person-to-head-abuse-inquiry-says-danczuk-politics-live-blog
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/story/43176/
In fact the information only appears in a round-up of other media sites.
Disgraceful but wholly understandable and expected.
(1) holds for tradeable products, tradeable services and services that can be replaced by tradeable products and services.
Japanese houses are made in factories. They don't look like they're made in factories, because they ship them in bits. But once the builders show up, the thing goes from a flat bit of land to a completed house before you know it. Because they're just bolting the house together. The parts were made in a factory somewhere, with machinery made in another factory somewhere else, and those will be places where they can get cheap labour. That means far fewer jobs for Japanese builders. They probably don't realize their jobs have gone overseas, but they have. And a lot of the related jobs that need to be near the place where stuff is getting produced have gone with them.
This is true of nearly all products and services, with ever decreasing numbers of exceptions. You may need somebody on the ground to carry on doing it the same way, but you can also do it a different way. If the government stops you employing someone from Country Y from doing a job efficiently in Country X, the market will reconfigure that business so that it can move the job to Country Y.
This happens even in a pre-internet world, but with good communications and robotics you'll be amazed what we can offshore in the next 20 years.
"IDS predicts UC approval 'shortly"
Sounds good, but what is his track record like on UC predictions?
The government is combating fraud quite successfully so your argument fails
https://fullfact.org/factchecks/DWP_fraud_hotline_success_rate_prosecutions-3167
Combating benefit fraud is important but the extent of it is limited. The point about capping and limiting benefits is to prevent it being a lifestyle choice. The govt have cut tax allowances to help low paid as well.
http://pan-europa-express.blogactiv.eu/2014/07/07/matteo-renzis-rise-its-rome-vs-berlin-now/?utm_source=EurActiv+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9afa612392-Bmail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bab5f0ea4e-9afa612392-245514803
So, it hasn't been signed off, but is being drip fed with money instead?
But very shortly, the committee will change it's mind and sign it off as normal?
In any case there aren't any jobs that anyone can do. All jobs require a minimum level of health, intelligence, dedication and non-criminality.
If your original post said something coherent, your thought is that you can restrict competition to increase the costs paid by employers so they have to employ people they think are less good than the people they wanted to employ - either more expensive people or less good people. Depending which one you're trying to do, the effect of doing this on the supply chain is exactly the same as either restricting the import of expensive car parts or restricting the import of better quality parts.
PS : I note you did not really answer the pocket money question.
I don't see how employers are paying more. They'd be paying the same but to different people
The left is very prone to inventing plastic upstanding working class people in trouble to advance their politics. The creation never really rings true though.
James O'Brien does it all the time. Also, take that 'working class family' from Jimmy McGovern's 'common' earlier this week. Working class family? Yeh right.
Employers are paying more in the minimum wage case because the people they're hiring after the government intervention you advocate aren't as good as the people they'd hire without government intervention. If they were, they'd already be hiring them.
They should be working through the arts world, music world, sports world and overpaid boardrooms as we speak.
The day after the night before and apart from an extraordinary cultural, historical and sporting event, a vivid example of how the most unlikely thing can still happen.
Polls can be micro-analysed (as they are) and constituencies dissected and people can believe they know what's going to happen but as last night showed, the improbable happens.
Nobody can discount a Labour landslide or even a Conservative landslide or all points in between and that wondrous uncertainty will keep us hooked for another ten months.
I prefer horse racing - the wondrous uncertainty gets resolved and then you get another go.
Middle class lefties have such a stupid idea of what working class people are like
The one issue we have to consider is whether Cameron would want to go on as LOTO and Conservative Party leader. The last man to return to No.10 was Harold Wilson and before that WSC so it just doesn't happen. My recollection is that both Major and Hague were desperate to quit as soon as the defeat was obvious and even Brown came to realise the futility of his position.
After ten years leading the Party and five years as Prime Minister, why would Cameron want or need to go on ? My guess if he loses next year, he'll quit quickly and cleanly and leave the Party to choose the new Leader. Unlikely Hague and IDS, neither of whom made it to No.10, I cannot see David Cameron serving in another man's Cabinet. My guess is he'll do a final term in Witney and then go on to something else.
What we will then see is a defeated and vengeful Conservative Party turning its fire on UKIP and, as Cameron tried to (with some success) after 2005with the Lib Dems, we will see the new Conservative leadership "love bombing" Farage and UKIP into submission or absorption.
I demand that you withdraw your final sentence.
Max is right about the fall in the Halifax House Price Index not being bad news, if it is significant news at all.
The BoE (and media) have been pushing to curb house price inflation through public warnings and it now seems to be working.
What the Halifax Index doesn't tell us though is what the regional variation in price rises is. With London prices growing well over twenty per cent and other regions barely growing at all this is necessary information before useful conclusions can be drawn. What we know from other indices is that central London prices have been falling quite significantly in the past few months so the Halifax aggregate UK index may just be reacting to price movements in the capital.s
[to be continued]
Halifax House Price Index: Part II
Anyway here is the yellow box which shows that on a quarterly basis UK houses prices have grown by 2.3% and on an annual basis by 8.8%. These remain the highest rates of growth recorded over the past year, though the current price/earnings ratio at 4.95 has begun to fall back from its high. All good news for the economy.
The worrying bit is the fall in volume of sales, which have been very low since the recession and a driver of the high rates of price increase.
The relevant key points from the Halifax report (May rather than June and not their own stats.) are
• Home sales edged down by 3% in May to below 100,000 for the first time in six months; however, transactions are still 15% higher than in May 2013.
(Source: HMRC, seasonally adjusted figures)
• New buyer enquires fell for the sixth consecutive month in May, which if sustained could moderate further growth in demand.
(Source: RICS)
A short period of a minority Ed Miliband Govt, with all the fun and games that will bring in the markets, coupled with Ed grovelling to Brussels and a period for buyers' remorse from the Kippers could see Cameron as PM again by 2016....
The other day I interviewed a (quite good, hard working and quick) lady who came into the interview carrying a appletize-type soft drink bottle from which she swigged intermittently throughout the process.
Another (young, well qualified) lady wore a jean jacket.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10955623/Pilot-orders-pizza-for-delayed-passengers.html
BBC Breaking News ✔ @BBCBreaking
Britain's defending Tour de France champion Chris Froome quits this year's race after crashing for third time http://bbc.in/1tn9Ywr
To an extent, although I think you overegg it.
Having said that, I don't see why offshoring jobs to cheap countries, because demand is outstripping supply and pushing up prices in your home country, as a bad thing. If it gets to the point where it's causing unemployment among the low skilled in your home country, the price of domestic low skilled workers will drop until they're in work again. The danger offshoring argument just doesn't justify depressing low skilled wages here.
Joel Taylor @JoelTaylorMetro
Britain's summer of sporting woe continues; Chris Froome is out of the Tour de France. No one is left to win Sports Personality of the Year
There is clearly a buyers' strike as values are completely over extended. There is a stack of pent up demand, but just not at these levels.
Plus....people think rates are going up and don't want to take on huge mortgages.
Plus... Who wants to buy and sell houses when the government rakes in so much stamp duty?
A British winner at the Open next week, unlikely though that is, would probably be a shoo-in.
I am not sure whether there has been any published research on why sales volume has been so low.
I don't believe it is lack of demand as the ratio of home buying inquiries to homes for sale (a Rightmove stat.) has been at historical highs (around 8 times the number of 'buyers' to 'sellers' from memory).
My speculation as to what is the primary cause is that sellers have been reluctant to realise a nominal price loss, especially in a market where rental demand is high. But then I was expecting sales volumes to rise disproportionately as prices across the UK reached their pre-crisis levels but this doesn't seem to be happening, at least not yet.
Three kids. Childcare for under 5s very rarely has higher than 3-1 staff kid ratios, because looking after young kids requires constant vigilence.
So, assuming the mother earned the same as care giver (and if not, we're assuming a whole class of people on very low salaries...), then the mother would be giving all her income away (and this assumes no other costs for the childcare, and no tax or NI). It also ignores time costs of commuting, etc. etc.
It's a real toughy.
In truth, Cameron could have governed on the same basis in 2010 - he didn't HAVE to create a Coalition to govern but it suited him (and Nick Clegg) to do so.
that, and he's a rather strange sort of cove....can't make head or tail...
Say you've got a field where you can grow fruit, which is a very labour-intensive business. Fruit buyers can also import fruit from other countries if you can't sell it at a reasonable price. The fruit picking is currently being done by low-paid people from Romania. There are some British people in the town who, for various reasons some of which are discussed up-thread, aren't taking the fruit picking jobs.
The thought is that if you stop the Romanians from entering the country, the farmer will have to pay the unemployed British people more to pick the fruit, they'll take the fruit-picking jobs, and they won't be unemployed any more. But the risk is that what actually happens is that the fruit growing business is no longer competitive, because somebody can hire the Romanians in another country, and that economic activity stops and gets replaced by something that produces a lower return.
But what's worse is that when you get rid of that economic activity, you also get rid of the surrounding work that was benefiting from that activity - say the guy working at the petrol station or the local shop, or the person helping do the accounting. Some of these jobs were being done by British people, and when you remove the economic activity that's funding their jobs, they either become unemployed, or take lower-paying jobs. Like a lot of government intervention into the operation of free markets, this ends up resulting in the opposite of what it was supposed to accomplish.
PS. This is meant as an example to illustrate the mechanisms at work, I don't know anything about the fruit business.
That political stability and commitment to fiscal repair was a major factor in the keeping low the rates at which the UK could continue to borrow.
As a result the UK managed to steer clear of the worst of the eurozone borrowing crisis.
Plus here's a short bit about the betting markets non-reaction to Labour poll leads:
http://ow.ly/yXl2W
You dismiss a genuine idea as ridiculous yet do not give a reason why it is ridiculous. Fairly poor standard of debate from you today sir.
"Everyone with an idea is a crank until the idea succeeds" - Mark Twain.
People's reaction to the citizen's payment is just that - a reaction. Of the knee jerk variety. It's a clever idea, but god is in the details.
Anything to destroy the insidious Benefits Trap.
You still haven't answered my question about what you would do with the children of single mothers whom you forced to work. Simplistic and wrong - that sums up your arguments today.
If she wasn't able to work the she wouldn't be claiming it anyway do wouldn't be denied it
Give people a bit if self respect by letting them earn money without being in debt to the state for handouts
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/07/we-are-all-numbers-in-labours-computer-now/
Unfortunately, as Charles has pointed out, it's probably not affordable.
Just a quick thought on C.I. - if it were treated like regular income, and subject to income tax then the cost of giving it to higher paid workers would be massively reduced. Whether that would be a sufficient saving to make it work is another matter altogether.
Argentina 1:7 Netherlands
Longer Shot: Gareth Bale - European champion
Watch out for Charley Hull, winning women's golf tournaments at 18.
Edit!! JW not such a long shot. He's second favourite!
Nevertheless, 'not all bad' is still 'not very good at all'.